Yeah like HITCSevens on diverse football issues ("I'm sorry, but we have to talk about X" / "What on Earth is going on at Y?!"). As long as he doesn't start doing Top Seven videos.
A soldier in the peacekeeping forces in the former Yugoslavia told me about how an Apache had come up to support him in a confrontation with a tank, flying just above street level. He and his guys in a humvee had observed said tank coming through town toward their lines. They went to check it out. It was nerve wracking till the attack helo came up. Then the tank’s drivers hatch popped open and out came a civilian. He’d found the tank abandoned, (he claimed) and had stored it in a garage. He’d got wind of the arms buy back program and was looking to sell it.
The really interesting part is if they actually did pay him. It's probably quite unhealthy for the civilian but random dudes sealing and turning in ex yugo tanks gotta be great.
8:03 “Making sure it’s not a fair fight” made me chuckle. My dad always told me growing up that there is no such thing as fighting dirty, and I’ve always heard that if it’s a fair fight you are doing something wrong.
Honestly even just playing strategy games teaches you this. If you've done things smartly, by the time your forces make contact with the enemy, victory should already be a foregone conclusion. A fair fight means you've either been taken by surprise or fucked up in some way.
One professor during my War Studies BA mentioned "watching the war" during the Gulf War when the 24/7 news cycle was fresh and so suddenly you could literally watch a war live, and he had a distinct memory of an attack helicopter being shown popping up from behind terrain, launching some missiles against an Iraqi collumn, and then vanishing back down with it being obvious the other side never knew it was there. "It didn't really feel sporting, like I knew in me heart that we were the good guys here but it doesn't feel like the good guy thing to do." We mentioned this to another professor during a class where he was making this point. He refered back to his introductory lecture on why to study War Studies and not War Studies in name that are actually Peace Studies. "It's a lot nicer to feel bad about war and how awful it is when you win. If you lose, of course it's bloody awful. You LOST. I don't care how well you bounce back, losing a war is always awful. So, win the fight THEN you can feel bad for the other guy."
@@AlexanderSchreiber Even in sports, no one wants a fair fight. As the saying goes "If you ain't cheating, you ain't trying." Anyone seriously competing will stretch the rules to their limit and break them if they aren't being well enforced. When the Tour de France stripped Lance Armstrong of his titles, they found that so many of the other competitors were also using PEDs that there was no one demonstrably clean that they could award the titles to. Even when staying within the rules, it's still about avoiding a fair fight. In any team sport, if one side has a weak defender, guess who's going to be picked on all game? If a team has the money and there aren't restrictions on spending, they can spend to try and get the best players, coaches, trainers, equipment, etc. It even happens in cases where one might not think that it's possible. During the Cold War, when playing each other Soviet players often ended games quickly so as to not exhaust themselves mentally and thus were better able to put their all against other players.
I remember the attack helicopter gunnery field manual from the mid-1980s going into a LOT of detail on how to do rocket tossing, which shows how serious the threat was considered even then.
Pretty sure even 80's soviet jets could toss dumb bombs with automatic release, you put the hud mark on the target, hold the trigger and climb keeping the wings level whole time and if you didn't roll too much you can land them with non trivial level of accuracy.
@@robertkalinic335 Everyone was toss bombing in the 80's/90's, when you're low level its the best way to attack anything that's defended. You'd also toss about 12 of the things at once so you get a few more rolls of the dice. But bombs are more reliable than rockets for that as they don' t go as far, gravity is much more consistent than solid rocket burns and the booms are much bigger.
So the Wargame: Red dragon tactic of identifying a gap in the A2/AD net, rushing the enemy's base with helos, blowing up their command units and then bugging out again while cackling like a madman, they're basically TOS. That's awesome! 😂
11:01 - 11:11 they did not identify a gap as such does not exist anymore in real life, they created the gap with electronic jamming planes first. that would mean that you would have to have something like Boeing EA-18G Growlers, too. that could be what he meant by having dozens of fifth gen planes doing that. its just that 1 growler costs 125 million, so dozens (24-36) of them would cost 3-4,5billion, too. Boeing AH-64 Apache costs $52 million. dozens of them (24-36) would cost 1.2B-2Billion. so, you are betting 4,5+2=6,5billion worth of equipment on just this one attack. is it really worth it? for usa this is no problem, they can afford to lose them in a failed mission they have infinite money, but smaller countries with limited budgets... they might want to choose 6.5billion worth of cheap drones instead. one first view person drone, according to guardian in 25.1.2024 article in ukraine, is 400 dollars. 6.5b/400 is 16.2 million drones. even if you use million drones a year, you can fight 16 years with that, sending 2700 drones every single day. ------------ also, you can use cheap drones in different creative ways, like " Russia deploys cheap drones to locate Ukraine's air defences" - reuters, July 26, 2024 "..are produced from materials like foam plastic and plywood, the official told Reuters. One type carries a camera and a Ukrainian mobile phone SIM card to send images back to the Russian military. The new Russian drones with cameras do not carry explosives but closely resemble regular Shahed drones and fly with groups of them, Cherniak said. The second new type of drone contains no explosive charge or only a small one and is being used as a decoy, Cherniak added. Because it is virtually indistinguishable from a regular attack drone from the ground, it still needs to be shot down, revealing where Ukraine's air defence systems are located. "They identify where our mobile groups are positioned, where the machine guns are that can destroy them. They're trying ... to get a picture of where all our air defences are located," said Andriy Cherniak, a military spy agency spokesperson. The drones can also fly at an altitude of 1,000 m (3,000 ft), putting them out of range of machine guns and automatic rifles, he said." i guess they use long range cameras to snap pictures from 1kilometer away in the sky with the drone. like a mini satellite.
@@Redmanticore That sort of calls into question - if you need dozens of aircraft to support your helicopter raid, why not just have the aircraft conduct the raid themselves faster and with heavier weapons?
@@ARCNA442 Isn't it payload capacity? Anything as stealthy as a low flying helicopter doesn't have the same kind of firepower or ability to find targets? Right?
@@ARCNA442 fixed wing aircraft can't stay on station and fight in a sustained way, especially behind enemy lines. Further ... the threats to each are different. The frontline AD threatens helicopters as Chieftan noted. But those assets are kept at the front and are thinner in the rear. Meanwhile, heavier AD is denser in the rear, and threatens fixed wing assets more and more the closer they get. So attrition rates for fixed wing missions go up the deeper they go into the battlespace, while the inverse is true for rotary.
@@ARCNA442 you can try that in a Wargame-like game and see how it goes: enemy long-range radar AA covers rear areas as well against aircraft strikes, but if you can get helos around behind the front, you can hit their lines of reinforcement far enough back that they can't reach you. In Wargame: Red Dragon, you might be facing Patriots that can't even target helos ingame. And in WARNO and Broken Arrow, attack helos can often outrange or match radar AA's range against low altitude targets so they're more of a threat to long range AA than the reverse. With the 101st Airborne in WARNO, you can use their Quick Fix jammer Blackhawk to lower radar AA accuracy and then engage them with Hellfires from their Apaches. And in Broken Arrow you can get helos with ARMs and the Russians even have one carrying cruise missiles, helos can be very effective at hunting radar AA when used properly. It always drives me crazy in those games the way most people use their helos though - they send them one at a time directly at the front line, every enemy AA unit focuses their fire on them and they die immediately, then they send in the next one...if you do what they're talking about in this video and send a squad of them on a raid deep behind enemy lines, almost no one keeps enough short-ranged AA with their backline units to defend them properly, and you can rip through whatever they have. Especially in team games, you can destroy multiple players' artillery parks and take out all their unprotected reinforcements with a sudden attack helo strike.
@@iatsd Not only demonstratively false, but an odd thing to accuse an Irish man of. As for Ian, there aren't too many English speaking countries aside from the US that have the laws, culture and collections to make forgotten weapons possible, so I really don't see your point. I'm not American FYI
"The question is whether you actually _needed_ those capabilities, and a lot of militaries _don't."_ *Bundeswehr procurement official: **_"You rang?!"_*
The Case of the Bundeswehr is indeed curious. Because the are not divesting from the Attack Helicopter, but plan to switch to a much lighter form of it. So first we would need to know what the Bundeswehr needs their non-transport helicopters to to.
@naamadossantossilva4736 They still operate some tigers, but plan to phase them out. They will be replaced by H145M with side mounted weapons. Similar to the Bo-105P So reduced capability, but heavily reduced price.
I understand Japan is having, or looking down the road at, serious manpower shortages. It's entirely possible that they looked at the AH mission-set they would be using and came to the conclusion that drones, autonomous or not, reduced their manpower and costs much more than the reduction of capability and decided it was worthwhile to wind down their AH units.
I think converting the AH into a unmanned platform or remotely operated platform would be the best use of them. Attack helicopters doesn't require them to be manned necessarily,
@@davidmclean357 Most attack helicopters have two crew members. On average that's about 360-400 pounds of humans and gear. Remove the seats, human-use controls (replace with actuators), put in heavily shielded (against EW) cages, and computers inside those cages (derived from OTS) and you have a drone. Since you've already paid for the AH, the only cost of the drone is the substitute "crew". These could be remotely tasked (not directly flown like trad drones) and the computer can probably react faster than the human crews to threats.
@@goetzliedtke That is my thinking, the role of the copter is still critical but keeping the pilots remote or possible AI assisted just makes sense anyway.
They aren't planning to fight on land anytime soon, and over sea rotor craft do jobs almost entirely replaceable with unnamed and arguably even fully automated drones. The sole exception being search and rescue, and oh look, they have a massive program for more dedicated search and rescue helicopters. Their only two real jobs are anti-submarine warfare, which can be automated easily and requires external communication to be effective anyway, and recon.... which also requires communication to matter anyway. Bonus points, when doing SIGINT missions from a destroyer with a drone you can switch to a smaller bungee launch and recovery fixed wing drone, and your mission time goes up by literally 8 times while costs go to the floor. Hell, you can even have 6+ drones up at once checking different spots and triangulating, vs your solo helo trying to do three jobs at once.
@@goetzliedtkeeven with those "cages", you'll still require a way to give commands to said drone, and in intense EW environment it gonna be tricky. However, if you replace just some of the AH with drones and task the remaining AHs' gunners with managing them, and stay in the line of sight (that allows narrow beam UHF or even laser communication), that may actually work.
There's an old Willy's G.I. Joe cartoon where the jetpack wearing supersoldier is flying over a WW2 infantry grunt, and the grunt asks "What you got to dig holes?" The jetpacker had the surprised Pikachu face (the cartoon was c. 1945).
Every US service member not in an org decented from the contatal army... "What are thyese mythical trenches you speak of?" Like serrouly when ever has member of the US navy, marines or chaost needed to dig a tranch? Heck the space force gardian has much more reason to then a navy seal or marine!
Love your channel, especially the previous M1128 video since it always seemed like an ambiguous vehicle. My grandfather was a tanker with the Polish II Corps (4th Armored Regiment/2nd Warsaw Armored Brigade) in WWII at Monte Cassino, and I've always wondered what he went through, in that crammed space, in a foreign land. I've always been very fascinated in armor because of his experiences, and your channel is the epitome of armored history. Watching your videos helps me respect the struggle my grandfather went through more.
I love the operational information. This kind of Chieftain videos helps framing so much of the the thinking behind vehicles, weapons and desired capabilities. There is a good, carefully considered reason, obvious or not, correct in the long run or not, for most of the stuff an army requires.
"The soldier is now obsolete with my new Gatling Gun" - Mr Gatling. There's been new innovations in war for a long time now and while some things have become obsolete, nowhere near as many as have been predicted.
@@Treblaine Yes, but if changing tactics could mean that attack helicopter is replaced with just… a transport helicopter armed with longer range weapons.
The thing a lot of people forget is that combined arms warfare is a team sport. Every asset brings with it capabilities that punch above their individual weight. Getting Apaches going after air defence was a critical element of desert storm. Now think of some juicy targets like airports, logistics hubs etc etc. thats deep battle doctrine. Its not just hitting deep targets, its telling your enemy that all similar targets are fair game the next day. Rinse and repeat. I have been involved with a few Flag exercises, its great that the army is playing along. And, for anyone that thinks helicopters are too vulnerable, think again.
Probably scariest for the Apaches. Sometimes all it takes is someone with a rifle in the wrong building. Or a manpad. They really need to pick their targets and paths carefully. Yes, Ukrainians have put Cessnas through the first line of air defenses, but they probably lost some and the Russians haven't exactly been great with their defenses.
@@Andreas-gh6isRussian Helos have defensive systems that will spoof a MANPAD, and when they are loaded and functioning, simply require the pilot to observe, orient, decide, and act to defeat the threat. This is extraordinarily difficult while flying above the trees - but not transmission towers, power lines, etc. - with all your mental bandwidth dedicated to your task. The Apache defeats the threat before you know what is happening, and then lets you know.
@@geekstradamus1548 One apache has been shot down with an antique hunting rifle. I get that Apache's are hot shit. I still don't think they are all that survivable in freaky situations and with the proliferation of all sorts of manpads or even anti tank missiles...
@@Andreas-gh6is You have come across a lot of bad dope, so let me straighten out one story for you - dope in this connotation means data, not weed. You’re referring to a farmer near Karbala, Iraq that claimed to have shot down an Apache with a Kar98. This Apache was one of 31 from 1/227 Aviation and 6-6 CAV used in that attack, all others returned. CWO Williams and Young were captured, I’m sure you’ll remember seeing the propaganda video released by the Iraqis is you look it up. During their mission there was everything from small arms, to heavy MG, to 30mm, and missiles filling the sky. Williams even got shit in the foot by a bullet that penetrated the cockpit. The aircraft was eventually hit and taken out by a BMP. They got as far as they could, landed, and tried to escape on foot. The farmer Ali something - not joking his first name is Ali, maybe that will help you find his video - and his grandson found the aircraft and contacted authorities. When they showed up, they had him make a propaganda video where he claimed he shot it down. He later said he was forced to lie, and never got the money Sadaam promised him. The Apache was destroyed by an airstike shortly after. Now, the fact you believed a man armed with a Kar98 got so lucky as to plink an Apache out of the sky - tells me it’s pointless for me to try and explain how things are. It’s probably about a 1:50M shot. You’d have to believe there have been 50,000,000 times a farmer has shot an “antique hunting rifle” at an Apache to believe there’s a 50/50 chance that story is true. Assuming you’re young enough not to remember the specifics of the story, and have never served in any capacity whatsoever so that you’d have no reason to have come across the facts of the story, and yet are so incurious as to have never bothered looking up such a fantastical claim but simply accepted it on face value, and the spew it out as though you’d have the first clue as to its veracity - you do this with military matters, do you do it with medial concerns? Do you share the same unfounded opinions regarding cancer treatments? Or repairing transmissions on 2003 Ford F-150s? How to groom a dog or keep your cockatoo healthy? Or are you just drawn inexorably to military matters you have no experience in, play some games and watch some videos, read four books, and now you are fully qualified to fall for rank Baathist propaganda that is laughably preposterous - and ACTUALLY repeat it?!? Well, have at me, my arthritic thumbs and fingers are absolutely brings after all that, so I’m out. Enjoy your week. Enlist and live it before you find yourself spending everyday of the last 30 years of your life regretting not doing it.
remember folks, if nothing can replace the function of an equipment, then that equipment it not outdated, unless you have another equipment that can do the fulfill that role much better,so no, tanks and attack helis are not "outdated"
You don't need another equipment to fill that role. If that equipment can no longer fulfill that role, it's obsolete whether there is a replacement for it or not. See body armor. At some point it went from full plate to cuirass before it going away entirely. WW1 tried to revive body armor but none of those worked particularly well. For most of the 20th century, body armor was obsolete and there were no successor. We got ceramic plates and kevlar vests now but we didn't just keep using steel cuirass just because we didn't get a successor yet. The key take away is whether said equipment can best fill a specific relevant niche/role. Warfare and doctrine will change when a role can no longer be effectively filled regardless of how important that role otherwise was.
The constant question a commander asks is what of my assets I have that can do objective "x, y, or z". The commander asks this, knowing that a battlefield is a place where machinery and troops get broken and destroyed. Remove specific weapons like helicopters or tanks from the scenario; if his troops only have sticks to hit the enemy with, upon the procurement of rock 2.0, the commander is not going take away all of his troops sticks. At least until some smart person comes up with stick 3.0 or combines a sharp rock to a stick to create a spear 1.0.
@@neurofiedyamato8763 But body armour was still around, it just wasn’t as prevalent as it is today (it wasn’t exactly standard issue during the 19th or 18th centuries). For starters there’s obviously the introduction of steel helmets as standard issue during WW1. There’s also steel body armour for the torso as issued to German machine gunners, and reinforcing helmet plates. During WW2, flak vests became standard issue to bomber crews, and already by the time Korea rolled around, flak vests had become standard infantry equipment in hot spots. What had in fact happened was precisely what you argued hadn’t happened, or didn’t need to happen: namely that the millennia old steel body armour had been replaced by ceramic and kevlar body armour. The employment of steel body armour had fluctuated prior to that, but it from the time before Rome was even a collection of agrarian villages to the time of Vietnam, steel body armour had nonetheless been found in the field.
Attack helos are not outdated but are as obsolete as when they were built - but they only exist because of the peace treaty between the US Army, Navy and Air Force at Key West. They are a solution to the US Army's need for on call air support, as was done in 1944, in the era of an independent US Air Force, which allows the US army wings or guns, but not both.
What's old is new again. You're spot-on. What many "laymen" on the internet don't fully grasp is the distinction between combined-arms maneuver warfare, and the last twenty years of COIN, as the MG stated in your clip. Pink teams and direct support of troops in contact are what is commonly mischaracterized as "what attack helos do" nowadays. You can tell from my avatar I'm of the old-skool too, although all of my combat time was spent in the COIN years. Although maneuver warfare is back in the schoolhouse, there aren't many of us left that recognize the "Corps Deep Fight" graphic you showed. FM 17-95 is the Old Testament, and the new disciples are learning the lessons! Scouts Out!
Even as an infantry guy, the old TMs are the best for conventional large scale maneuver warfare, and fm 17-95, the end all be all of cavalry operations is an excellent source of knowledge.
Also a lot of people tend to look at military equipment in a vacuum instead of as part of a combined arms whole. The closest it gets is the "rock-paper-scissors" mentality that leads to stupid claims like the subject of this video.
Who would have thought that in war that military aircraft would get shot down? That's just ridiculous, it would never happen unless it was obsolete, right?
And same with tanks too, of course. So many praises sung to western tanks in the Ukraine war, then Ukraine fielded them and some inevitably got knocked out. Suddenly so many turned to "western tanks are actually terrible and obsolete, long live drones!" And now you have people even right here suggesting that militaries should replace their entire air forces with millions of commercial drones, lol
A very enlightening video, but what I really appreciate is you flattening the term "Congressman or Congresswoman" to "Congress-critter." It is doubtful I will ever do mission planning for a flight of Apaches, but I will be referencing my Congress-critter in casual conversation from now on.
I suspect the fundamental issue isn't that these systems like tanks or attack helicopters are obsolete as a class. I suspect the problem is more that most of the "modern" design in use, are at least 40 years old if not older. Meanwhile there have been a lot of advancements in munitions design, surveillance and fire control. In the classic attack vs. defence balance, such older systems their defensive values, so don't be detected, acquired, hit, penetrated etc, have arguably degraded much faster than the attacking capabilities that newer munitions have given such older weapon systems. I suspect that if a brand new attack helicopter or tank would be designed now, taking into account all the technological advances of the last decades, it would not be called obsolete at all. As for AH-64 in US service. Well those are arguably by far the most modernised of the older attack helicopter designs around. That means massive sensor suite and fire control enhancements to be able to survey a much more dangerous battlefield and be able to operate in such an environment. Not all attack helicopter designs are so lucky. What I feel is happening in Ukraine is fundamentally two mostly 1970s and 1980s level technology armies clashing in the 2020s. There have been at least four decades where munitions have been specifically developed to defeat 1980s level defensive technology. And guess what, that is happening. I feel that if there is a lesson to be learned, it would be that the (not upgraded) 1970s and 1980s stuff needs to go. That stuff had a very long lifespan, but its outdated because it was all designed and produced before the massive developments in computer technology took place. These days, you have way more computing power in your smartphone than these systems have for their sensor and fire control systems. And on a battlefield where such massive surveillance capabilities are now a reality, you arguably need to be able to detect and evade or engage threats even faster.
It's a pretty fair assessment, I think. I came to a similar conclusion discussing tanks in use in Ukraine over on one of the military history visualized videos: the modern stuff is good, the really old stuff is efficient if limited, but the intermediate/ late cold war stuff just doesn't really suit.
@@TheChieftainsHatch When it comes to drones and tanks, I firmly believe that whoever invents the cheapest automatic-drone-shooting-gun-turret is going to be a very rich person. The requirements will be: 1) Cheap 2) Uses a standard weapon, like the American rifle calibre infantry machine gun whose code I can't remember. The one up from the M249. 3) Passive always on 360° stereo visual light and thermal sensor, optional radar and laser range but off by default, don't radiate unless you have to 4) Probably use a bit of machine learning to identify targets and track their course. 4) Can be easily mounted on and powered by every motor vehicle line Tanks, APCs, Truck, etc. You stamp them out by the thousand and put them where the CROWS turrets go or it can magnetically attach with powered electromagnets to a flat piece of the vehicle. You just have to be very careful about not shooting below a safety boundary so you don't accidentally shoot your own infantry guys in the head.
@@TheChieftainsHatchThere’s a defense economics issue with this gear that you have to address at some point. A modern Iowa would probably be more useful in the Red Sea than a bunch of Burkes. It would also be ludicrously expensive. When you adjust for inflation a WW2 Sherman costs about 400-500 thousand 2024 dollars. We also had the ability to build them quickly & at the scale. They were also relatively uncomplicated & easy to use, fix & modify. They were also fairly light, which made them useful in a wide variety of settings. Modern tanks (and choppers) are complex, exceedingly expensive & cannot be built nearly as quickly or in large quantities. Their logistics trail is also more complex & expensive. They can’t operate effectively in nearly as many environments as they used to & protecting them against modern sensors and guided weapons makes them even more cost prohibitive. There are still places where horses are the best and most reliable form of transportation. And unlike a car a horse that’s spent a lot of time with you actually CAN get you home safely when you’re drunk. That doesn’t mean we should go all in on Horse 2.0.
I swear people would keep on coming with these "X is dead" or "X is obsolete" forever. Next thing you know we'll get a "human infantrymen are obsolete/dead... robots are the new normal" lol.
Politicians would love to use that line that "the soldier/sailor is obsolete" in order to take money away from Defence budgets, until a neighbour turns into a bully or people get wise to the kickbacks coming from the sales of equipment and bases. Or both. Nothing worse than an undefended pissed off electorate baying for political blood.
@Edax_Royeaux why would he do that when he can get funding for his toys from that no matter how many lives get wasted? It is not like he cares about American lives any more than good ol' Donald does.
Counterpoint: The following are dead Battleships Cavalry The infantry line The sword The pike Railroad artillery This is before things evolved into something else. The attack helicopter seems rather likely to be evolved out into something else. Professionals scoffed at naval aviation too. I'd still have attack helicopters, but I wouldn't have confidence in their being an effective platform into the 2050s.
The helicopter mission described here relies on air supremacy to the depth of 500 km over enemy territory. That's a completely unrealistic assumption. Mss production can drop costs down, drones are plenty smart enough to find huge IR and noise emitters , you can stick acoustic sensors every square miles for a few $ and network them together using cell towers or a solar-powered mesh network which should be good enough seeing they don't need to provide much data but aircraft sound signatures. Once the track is known, the enemy, even if they don't have air supremacy knows you're coming.
JGSDF's helicopter retirement plan does not represent other militaries' attitudes either. For one, they don't have a large recon & attack helo fleet to begin with, not to mention most of them are old AH-1s and trouble-laden OH-1s. JGSDF doesn't have a big budget and lacks personnel severely. In addition, they are transforming their force structure to one that is suited to long-range engagements over the Pacific, where Apaches are hardly useful. New SSM and SAM regiments need people to man, so cutting off the least useful units makes perfect sense. In any case the PLAGF across the pond to Japan not only do not find attack helos to be obsolete, but they find their current Z-10s to be inadequate and are acquiring their own Apache counterpart.
Japan is also not planning on fighting any land wars anytime soon, and helicopters are vastly more vulnerable when fighting at sea, where every surface ship is rocking some kind of extreme range sam now, and there's nowhere to hide. They also only have three real jobs at sea, SIGINT, ASW, and search and rescue. Japan is buying more search and rescue helicopters, and the other two can be fantastically done with drones, and both require communication to other assets anyway so jamming mission kills a manned helicopter anyway: unless you're planning on operating a helicopter large enough to carry an anti-sub torpedo and a sonar buoy at the same time, but even America is shying away from that going forward. It's just so hard to compete against 8+ fixed wing signals drones, and 3 mono-copter drones launched from one destroyer, vs trying to do all that work with just a single manned helicopter. Half of the fixed wing drones cover intermediate communications, the three rotor drones sound with the buoys, and the other fixed wing drones carry the air dropped torpedo's to the site when a sub is detected. You can do more from the same hanger than you can with a manned asset.
@@ASDeckard I mean I don't understand how anyone can say helicopters are not useful at sea when the US navy/maruines abuses all of theirs and one of the ways the US army wants to fight in the pacfic is staioning apaches on super carreirs... Like attacke helicopter are isnanly useful when combined with ships honce why ever navy that can afford a polane carrier has helicopter ones including Japan by the way which they just got... Also the marines still you cobras an acnet farme off their assault carrier all the time even now when they have F-35s... lIke it makes more sense for Japan to have helicopters then F-35s as they are much cheaper and faster to turn around while carring mucgh more then 4 weapons at a time which the F-35 can't VTOL with a full loadout... which I don't think Japan's heli destroys has STOL abilities... So yeah if anything Japan having a helicopter only airfornce makes the most sense then having all land based fighters that can't fioght china with out US help...
@@ASDeckard Japan being an island nation also does not risk having enemy armored divisions with thousands of tanks and IFV's flooding over their border. I would say that Japan plans to make a landing so difficult that not even a single enemy tank will reach Japanese soil. With this in mind investing in an attack helo fleet to fight a landwar on Japanese territory is not the best investment.
Not a real expert on military planning for equipment and tactics, but being a 20 year veteran of Armored Cavalry, I still occasionally get asked about the relevance of tanks and helicopters by people who have been watching clips from the invasion of Ukraine. I’m glad to find out that 30 years after retiring that my impression is about the same as yours. By the way, Love that Blackhorse shirt. That was my first assignment (originally the 14th ACR) 53 years ago.
Roles for equipment change over time as do the manuals that define and describe those roles. A changing modern battlefield doesn't mean something is destined for the scrapyard, just that it needs its role or purpose rewritten a bit.
@@ProfessorFickleA trebuchet is probably a bit more stealthy than artillery or MLRS. Probably a _very_ niche use case, and there are a lot of downsides.
@@alexandermonro6768 I’ll agree that a trebuchet is more stealthy than a howitzer the day you can show me one with sufficient range that it doesn’t need to be so close to the enemy that he can recognise the individual soldier firing it at him.
This deep penetration raid role of the attack helicopter somehow sounds even more suicidal than the frontline fire support role. At least for the latter, newer longer ranged missiles can mitigate some danger.
All going to be about how and where your using them as much as anything - For instance a deep penetration of Russian lines in this current conflict for an attack helicopter looks like it would be pretty darn easy really - really dangerous no doubt, but actually fairly easy. If the really cheap, easy to spot and shoot down drones that have almost no brains can make it a real pilot with all that human intelligence and likely a very good briefing on the known and expected locations of dangers to plot a similarly safe route to the target can too. The front is just too long to really harden, so zipping though to mess up the logistic train etc would be quite plausible if Ukraine actually had top of the line attack helicopters and pilots for them now.
"The idea that a war can be won by standing on the defensive and waiting for the enemy to attack is a dangerous fallacy, which owes its inception to the desire to evade the price of victory." Douglas Haig. War was always costly,to win you need to do some stupid and almost suicidal shit.
@@nomorerainbows You are being naive.Evil "people" exist and will force you to war. Just look at the last 2.Neither Ukraine nor Israel could just not get into war.
I don't believe this is a realistic scenario in a near-peer war. In Ukraine, the reason drones are managing to penetrate deep behind the lines is saturation / numbers game - tons of them get shot down, but some of them get through because the enemy ran out of missiles or they flew through a gap in the defense (and no, you can't always identify those gaps before the attack). This is possible because drones are cheap, but it does not work for more expensive drones like the TB-2 which cost about $5million, or the Russian equivalents. Modern attack helicopters are an order of magnitude more expensive. If half of your helis got shot down during a mission it's a catastrophe. Russian attack helicopters were still somewhat useful but they did not do any deep penetration(after the first day), they lobbed missiles while flying low ~10km behind FLOT.
Yeah, saying "Ukrainian drones prove this is possible" while ignoring the fact that both sides have given up on using actual helicopters in this manner is sort of a selective reading of current events.
That's the thing, though. "near-peer". If there are one nation who got the resouces and will to make sure they never, ever get into a situation they have anyone so close in capability they are considered a near-peer, it's the US.
The US Army has intended the Apache to be a deep penetration asset literally since the day it entered service. It's mission was never CAS until the GWoT era. It's mission was deep penetration "battlefield shaping" operations.
Thank you for the close/rear/deep explanation; that's a thing I sort-of knew but getting it spelt out like that was super helpful in understanding how modern militaries expect to funciton.
I was lucky enough to make a career in Army Aviation. My mos was 16s. They decided to take the armed reconnaissance helicopter away. The powers that be said that we could use drones for that. Now my understanding is that the Army is looking for a new Armed Reconnaissance Helicopter. I believe that politics plays into it more than needs to be. Thank you so much for the knowledge and experience that you share with us. I always enjoy watching.
I came to the Chieftain's channel for the historical armor. While here, I've come to love these occasional insights into current military thought from a serving officer. This stuff is gold. :)
The thing is that most products can have multiple uses. Any individual product in a category can be more or less useful in a new role. The questions are: What compromises do you take by giving this product a new role? Would a product designed specifically for the new role be better and if so how would it be better? We have to be clear about these questions and the opportunity cost of adopting a new platform versus other uses for the money. I don't have an answer in this case, but we do have to be careful about repurposing existing platforms.
These are some of my favorite types of videos. Taking things and putting them into context, something you excel at. Like your videos on France leading up to and in the start of WWII and your video on how the US got ready for WWII.
Well i was in a National Guard Attack Battalion for 10 years. We trained for the exact mission you describe before the GWOT. We would rely on stealth, speed and our superior night vision equipment to succeed. Also, even though we were a division asset we basically worked for the corps level HQ, because a division didn't have the organic assets to support our deep missions. But with Apaches costing $40mil today plus the two man crew, the prevalence of cheap drones with good night vision operating at higher altitudes, watching every sector of the battlefield, the risk is too great. Our use of darkness and low level infiltration are no longer survivable. Maybe they could get to the target, but they could never get home without significant losses. We could do it in the 90's but not today. High level survaillance and cheap one way attack drones are the future for this role.
Most people have no idea that the Apache was a deep attack asset, and not a CAS asset. Going all the way back to the earliest versions of the Airland battle.
And the real question is, could you do it in the 90s? All it takes is one report to get through to the opfor airforce, and you will be filled full of Vympels faster than you can turn around. Or for an enterprising ZSU2 or ia to be in the wrong place at the right time. Helicopters are just too fragile, their only possible defence is range, which they cant really guaruantee to maintain in a penetration assault. I can see it as a hail mary, or flying over terrain definitely not occupied by hostile forces, but then you still count on a poorly defended final target caught by surprise.
great video, when I served in Europe, I remember at one briefing, if you see Apaches in action, that means something went seriously wrong and they are going to plug the hole, stop the breach of that section of front. they are that valuable of a asset. that was back in the late 80s, and they still rocking it.
I wish the Army would teach us things like this. I know as a lowly E5, it's not immediately pertinent to what I do, but stuff like this does give a broader perspective on how amd why we do what we do. Death-by-powerpoint and BS ALMS classes don't cut it.
There’s also an additional consideration. How long before drone pods are developed FOR helicopters and probably also high altitude awacs/130-gunship style aircraft. Drones are a supplementary tool, not an outright replacement of vast swathes of other equipment.
You get a like good sir. Very well put together argument. You get straight to the point, no unnecessary weight. Cleanly laying out the situation with just the right amount of nuance. I was skeptical coming in to watch this, turns me around a bit.
A few years back I was in a small field with my SAIGA 12g shotgun shooting down steel plates. To one side was my camouflaged lightweight Land Rover under some trees. I looked left and saw an Apache hovering a couple of hundred feet up and probably three hundred yards away just having a look at this weird person with an AK. Yes the saiga looks like an AK because it is but chambered for shotgun shells. This was in East Anglia, England. Now. 1. How did it spot me in the first place to bother having a look? 2. How come it was so quiet. I mean really, really quiet. I think I waved but to be honest my reaction was more surprise.
The tail rotors were designed to be quieter than usual ones due to how they are offset. Nice to know a helicopter larger than an Abrams can creep-up on people
1. That chin-mounted sensor node is _scary._ 2. This isn't actually new, but with careful design you can direct the sound of a helicopter's rotors down and behind its direction of travel. The earliest helicopter I know of with that design consideration was the S-67 Blackhawk, which was effectively an American version of the Hind, but so fast that it had airbrakes on its winglets.
@@griffinfaulkner3514 Not to be confused with the SH-60 Black hawk. Just so people know, the S-67 was a prototype attack helicopter that never really seemed to go anywhere.
The Apache has *always* been a deep strike asset. Even back during the Land Air battle days. In 2003 the US had a whole Brigade of Apaches pretty thoroughly rekt in a single deep strike using these very tactics (See: Battle of Karbala) Only because of Afghanistan did the Apache become a CAS asset. Back in the 80s-90s it was never intended to perform CAS.
And that was only from being shot at by a bunch of heavy machineguns and primitive autocanons, now imagine a near peer adversary with a bunch of shilka/gepard equivalents and SAMs around the place lol...
@@CalgarGTX Or even overflying any modern combat unit with a healthy dose of modern MANPADs missiles at their disposal. If the Apaches had overflown so much as a company of long retired obsolete Vulcan PIVADS there's a good chance not a single one of the Apache's would've survived. It's also important to note that this was a preplanned ambush by the Iraqis. They had studied US apache operations and knew what was coming, and where it was coming to. Our enemies read our deep attack doctrine too, and they were waiting for it. The deep battle can work, but the Apaches path has to be cleared with immediately on tap ATACMs or MLRS fire support, or even fixed wing escorting assets like A-10s. These were two of the major lessons of the Battle of Karbala. The third major lesson was the same lesson we didn't learn when the F-117 was shot down over Yugoslavia: Ingress and egress routes need to be unpredictable. Not to mention that the Apache has almost no air to air capability at all if it stumbles into some air threats on the way in. Fortunately since all the US does is beat up on 3rd rate powers, the Apache should remain viable for the foreseeable future.
@@Fury-161 If we have to clear the path via ground based fire, and support the rotary asset via fixed wing asset, then why not just send in the fixed wing asset to start with? Also, doesnt usaf determined that a10 is not survivable against a peer adversary? Then how is apache suddenly more survivable?
The AH-64E is also probably one of the best protected if not the best protected helicopter in the world since it can remotely operate drones like a global hawk flying well above the ceiling of close in defense systems and identify them in advance, it's front arc is protected by a jammer that protects it from at least anything short of a Pantsir, and it is increasingly being equipped with highly effective DIRCM pods such as the Terma AMASE from the Danish which provide reliable protection against contemporary manpads.
I think this misses the point that air defence is going to massively proliferate to account for the ubiquitous presence of UAS. Even if attack helicopters can conduct a penetration, they are going to find rear echelons with extensive counter measures. It’d would be like Karbala but everyone has the extensive capabilities to shoot down something that flies.
Anti drone systems (with exceptions) are generally much less capable of shooting down larger aircraft like Helicopters of Fixed wings. Mostly due to the fact that anti drone systems are *specifically* designed to be as cheap to shoot as possible, leaving the defence against actual aircraft to already existing assets because the already existing assets were too expensive to reasonably use against drones. So most anti drone systems end up being: Jammers, Lasers, SHORAD (think something like the Gepard or Tunguska, or a newer system like a Phalanx, or MANTIS), or literally just a dude wielding a shotgun loaded with birdshot. The only two out of those that are a real threat to Helos are Lasers and SHORAD. They already had to avoid SHORAD, so nothing changes there, and lasers are currently not very capable of shooting down anything larger than a drone or missile, though they *can* technically down a Helicopter, they are much more likely to eat a hellfire before they do much to it beyond burning the paint or some other exposed part. The reason Lasers work so well against most drones is because they are made out of plastic with a melting point of ~300ºc, aircraft grade Aluminium and composites can withstand a lot higher temperatures for a lot longer.
Will they though? The challenge with drones is it’s uneconomical to even use a manpad. With smoke, ER, auto-remote turret light autocannons or HMGs on vehicles, or even just killing the controller remotely those are cheaper options than equipping every infantryman with 10 manpads, or having five thousand SPAAs. Drones for the most part are an economic threat. The “drones” ukraine are sending hundreds of kilometres are basically planes, I think even the cardboard drones won’t be doing that. But of course, we will see!
THIS is why I enjoy your channel so much 🤠😍 Full disclosure- I am not a vet - but your explanation is spot on. “Make sure it’s NOT a fair fight” is exactly how we should conduct a confrontation 🤠
I don't know what other people say as to why Helicopters outdated, but I can say that there a lot of disadvantages to having helicopters over drones, and few advantages.
@@Slava22222 Drones will probably end up taking some of the jobs of the attack helicopter, but there are plenty of things an attack helicopter can do that a drone cannot. You would end up having to scale a drone up to the size of an attack helicopter, at which point you may as well just have a manned one in most circumstances.
@@ParoXyzmm As I said, drone has a lot of advantages but also has some disadvetages. I don't think it will take much time to improve drones even further(to a level where they can overtake Helicopter). Looks like militaries understand the importance of unmanned aircraft, and more research is directed in improving it.
@@Slava22222 There are certain things that smaller drones simply can't do compared to a larger airframe. So at least having the *option* of a larger airframe is a must. The problem there is that it is very hard to get the capabilities of a manned aircraft in an unmanned system without just having it be remotely piloted. At which point, for an airframe that large, you may as well just put a person in it. Helicopters are one of those things where you would have to maintain strict EMCON (behind enemy lines at least), and make decisions about how to act on your orders on your own. Unmanned systems can't do that yet, and with Man in the Loop doctrine, they might not ever. I *can* see drone wingmen, or loitering munition payloads on attack helicopters though, more likely loitering munitions. In fact I've heard that the newest AH-64 modernization added the capability to direct and communicate with loitering munitions and other drones.
Just because a platform is absent or poorly used, does not mean it's not useful in the proper role with the proper tactics. And more specifically, the ability of the helo to go from initial troops in contact to munitions on target is exceptionally fast, Probably among the fastest platforms out there. Fixed wing platforms are great, obviously, but they need time to get briefs, set up their attack runs, clear airspace, etc. Helos can get orient towards, and engage targets very fast.
Conversely, just because there is a theoretical niche that a platform can fill given perfect conditions and support doesn't mean the platform is worth keeping around. Horse mounted cavalry have continued to put in good work here and there in the modern era. That doesn't mean investing large amounts of money in horse cavalry is a good idea for any modern military.
In a possible future Pacific conflicts, AH-1Z Vipers are the best options for Island hopping. The pilots are trained and capable of refueling and rearming without support. Also the UH-1Y utility helicopters share over 70% same parts as Vipers. They are a lethal duo.
@ Idk looked it up says phased out by US Navy. So your point? Yes Huey/Vipers don’t have the large magazines Apaches/Blackhawks have. But they each require their own unique spare parts and a ground crew to reload and fuel up. Huey/Vipers can survive and stay in the fight on forward deployed supply drops alone. No extra personnel needed.
Deep penetration into the enemy rear (Pun intended), yep something's never change. We practiced and trained the very same battle plan with our AH1's in the 1980's. It was viable than and it's still viable today!...
The beginning of Operation Iraq Freedom they planned and tried a deep strike mission. One AH-64 shot down and two POW’s captured. The helicopter unit was shot up and turned around failing in their mission. In Baghdad at their was more restoring then two AH-64’s providing over head support and scouting for us lonely tankers, scouts and mortar sections.
The whole brigade got shot up really bad and was combat ineffective for the whole rest of the invasion. The deep strike is not a new concept at all. It's as old as the Apache itself.
Well said. Basically the usefullness depends on the enemy's capabilities and keeping your assets (mostly) out of the kill zone. No weapon is invulnerable but you want to minimize the danger of losing an asset while maximizing enemy damage. Just today it was reported A-10s scored a success, when they (because of their need to be danger close) were obsolete a decade ago, in many situations. Do we need to fire million dollar missiles when the situation calls for a few bullets?
In the 2003 Iraq War, the 11th AHR (a Corps level unit) and 1/227 Aviation (from 1st Cav Div) attempted a deep attack on Republican Guard mechanized divisions around Karbala, but the Iraqis detected them and shot them up with hundreds of AAA and small arms fire, causing one Apache loss and dozens others damaged. For the rest of the invasion stage, Apaches were mostly used in the close combat attack role supporting ground maneuver units.
@Valorius Deep attack works if proper recon is done, the attack force is not discovered and they synchronize their actions with fixed wing and artillery.
This kind of reminds me the discussions how battleships became obsolete once CVs really took over. Well, their days as the fleet's backbone and the principal force were gone for sure - but as shore bombardment vessels and with sufficient cover they could still be VERY useful.
they were never obsolete. Even the day they were retired the USMC commandant stated flatly that the USN had nothing (and still has nothing) that could match the battleships for naval gunfire support (NGFS)
@@Valorius The problem nowadays is how do you get that close to shore without getting merced by anti ship missiles. So if you have to support a battleship doing gunfire support with a bunch of other ships and potentially have to shoot down a bunch of missiles, you may as well have just done a tomahawk strike strike in the first place.
@@ParoXyzmm You kill everything that needs killing (ie antiship missiles or heavy guns) before you get that close to shore. Just like in the olden days. The other ships cannot do what the battleship does, just as the battleship can not do what they do. The military term is "combined arms."
@@Valorius Then why not forgo that initial strike on anti ship batteries, and just use those missiles to kill the target you're going after in the first place? I agree that they could be better for sustained bombardment, but we don't really do that any more. And most ships have 5 inch (127mm) guns that can be used for that purpose, and the modern guns can quite often outrange the older ones due to advances in ballistics and fire control. Not to mention potential added capabilities of the ammunition itself, like radio fuzing, airbursting, etc. Some newer ammunition is guided too, meaning you can be much more accurate.
What's interesting is that pretty much every time the Army has tried to execute a deep aviation strike in reality it hasn't worked well. Najaf is the obvious example.
Seeing a lot of comments about the Battle of Karbala. Long story short: don't try to dig a tank division out of a city using only helicopters. The lesson is specific to Iraq 2003: the Republican Guard learnt its lesson in 1991 when it dug into the desert and got its arse handed to it (they named the Apache "The Black Death" for a reason). In 2003, they parked up in and around a city full of angry people with rifles. The best counter to an attack helicopter assault is a flak trap, which is what they set up. BUT, hiding your tank divisions in a city is a sign you've already lost, because they don't belong there. The apaches certainly took a good kicking, and performed the CAS role for much of the rest of the conflict, but from a strategic point of view they had influenced the nature and outcome of the war before they even took off.
I'd guess it's possible for the mere possibility of something being there to deploy that can influence how an enemy shapes their own actions. If something niche can be sent that offers an easy answer, it might be that the very act of preparing for that specifically makes them more vulnerable to other forms of attack.
So in general it will require a bunch of close AA defense stuff like grunts with manpads to set up a honeypot (camo net, brigade level amount of radio emisions, some cargo trucks), wait a bit and screw a portion of super costly and rare enemy helo assets.
That would be quite tricky to manage, given that once through the front lines, the helicopters can maneouvre much faster than any defensive asset, and they will potentially have multiple worthwhile targets.
So you will need one of those in every place AHs might want to attack,280km deep in you backlines,with troops,maintenance equipment,decoy equipment good enough to imitate a modern radar array and some expensive AA missiles that you can't just reshuffle into the frontline.And if they just use the AHs as a fleet in being you wasted all those assets.
Did you actually listen to how it was mentioned such a breakthrough in the enermy frontline would be acheived? A divisions worth or artillery closely coordinated with the apaches could easily suppress your manpad teams long enough for the apaches to breakthrough. And if you are having to place lots of grunts with manpads in your entire rear, then that is a lot of men and material not on the frontline being used to stop the destruction of your line battalions.
The attack helicopter is not just well suited for deep penetration attacks but also excellent for defending against penetrating attacks. Rapid breakthroughs usually have less robust anti-air setup and the attack helicopter can rapidly respond to them. This is how we've seen them utilized effectively in more recent times during the Ukraine war (although with considerable friendly fire incidents).
A US Special Forces green beret once explained to me, when we were discussing the use of B-52's as CAS assets in Afghanistan that, "Assets are assets, they don't have missions, you just use them for anything they can be good at in any given situation." Heck even US *tanker* aircraft are credible CAS birds nowadays *in the right situation* (and they are used in that role)
Thank you for your video. Even here in Poland we have a heated debate about those Apaches we want to buy. The example of Japan is frequently used by the opponents. You explain everything very clearly so I will save this video for further debates as I suppose it'll finish them up quickly! Best regards
This is one of the best explanations I’ve heard. And it sheds light into the reality of things. You don’t have an unlimited number of anti aircraft munitions and you can’t just blanket the whole battlefield with the limited munitions you have. The tactic that the commander proposed is down right scary. Instead of attacking the frontline where your helicopters could be susceptible to anti aircraft munitions. You surgically enter into the enemy’s back lines and wreak havoc on enemy communications, command, and logistic centers. Further weakening and lengthening their logistics. I never really thought about using attack helicopters this way. But it makes so much sense. And the enemy could choose to more sparsely disperse their air defenses over the whole country, but that just leaves their frontlines even more vulnerable because now the attack helicopters don’t really have to worry about anti aircraft munitions as much. Truly not a fair fight.😁
Ukrainian drone attacks start with dozens of drones and only on rare occasions do 1 or 2 make it through. How many Apaches are you prepared to lose? Also, the idea that Low Altitude Air Defenses don't exist behind the front simply isn't true. While it was at one time it isn't any longer. They are the reason that so few drones make it through. While they aren't scattered all over the place, they are concentrated around the very targets an attack helicopter would be hunting. If an armored concentration is near the front, it has a vast array of Air Defenses covering it. If its being held in some depot well behind the front, the depot itself is covered by a variety of air defenses. While I agree that the Attack Helicopter should live on, its for an entirely different purpose. No other unit is capable of responding as quickly, with as much firepower and staying power, to an enemy armored breakthrough as an Attack Helicopter. They can respond to a breakthrough within minutes, stop the attack cold and keep it halted until other forces can relieve them. Attack Helicopters still have their uses but Deep Penetration Attacks aren't one of them, unless you're willing to lose nearly every helicopter sent on such missions.
Yeah with respect to Col Moran here he’s exactly wrong. The only future for rotary wing attack is precisely as a tank destroyer group or anti-vehicle “fire brigade.” The fact that (apparently) the US officer corps believes that air defense doesn’t exist beyond the front is hilarious, and disturbing at the same time. So clueless
@ I’m actually wondering if this is intentional misdirection. As a faithful member of the US Armed Forces Col. Moran could be spinning the line that he was ordered to. If they can convince Russia that they’re gonna send all their best Attack Helicopters off on suicide missions. Russia won’t be ready for them on their true missions. Of course, it’s always possible that the upper brass are arrogant enough to believe they can take out all of Russia’s Air Defenses behind the front and carry out such missions. The US hasn’t fought against a near peer adversary since the Korean War. They’ve been fighting against geurilla forces ever since. Vietnam only had significant air defenses around their sensitive sites in the north. They were willing to accept a few losses on every mission from them. They just attacked those defenses first. They might be thinking they can pull off the same thing with Russia but Russia has vastly more anti air capabilities than Vietnam. They’ve been feeding Ukraine with many of our best weapons for targeting air defenses. Although any attack from US or NATO Forces would involve many more missiles and drones attacking air defenses. They would still be using the same weapons that Russia has been defending against for years now. Russia has had an awful lot of practice. I’m keeping my mind open on this. While I wouldn’t put it passed them to be trying to mislead Russia, they just might be arrogant enough to think they could pull off such attacks without suffering devastating losses.
But that is the problem drones are good for massed attacks and not much else. Apaches are meant for combined arms warfare and designed for durability and survivability.
A lot of people are lookinng at the widespread and varied use of drones in Ukraine, and deciding that all sorts of capabilities are dead. The thing that they are failing to understand, is that a great many of these drone innovations are emergency fixes to cover gaps in the aresenal. I'm sure that instead of a Cessna jury rigged with components to allow it to be a one way attack object, that the Ukrainian military would prefer to be using a dedicated an infinitely more reliable (and probably effective) system designed for the task. That and the lesson any halfway competent military will be learning is that they need to up their EW game in order to tharwt one of their future opponents from yeeting platoons out of existence with a $500 DJI ... heck even the Russians and Ukrainians are both constantly deploying more systems to make the other side's drones less effective. I'm sure, in fact I know due to my studies, that similar arguments appearing during and after WW1 with heavier than air flying machines. Yes the first time something novel appears everyone decries that everything else is now obsolete. But once the initial shock wears off and things start getting defeated and countered the panic dies down and the truly revolutionary bits get picked out and applied. Just my opinion, for what little it is worth.
you can make this into a series.However I do think in the end , helicopters,tanks, apcs, , artillery, drones, jets, planes and even men and pickup/flatbed trucks are just platforms to transports things that go boom within range.
In a discussion that often carries the scent... dare I say, the musk... of idiocy, surface-level understanding and devotion to "hot takes", channels like this are a beacon in the dark.
from past doctrine vids, helos are the tank destroyer branch. and an excellent rear area assault weapon. there is nothing else that can do it better. The lower cost option is still anti-tank/he guided rocket and mounted a dozen to a dirtbike.
Honestly, I can only say for four things COULD be considered "dead" by weapon standards. Those being the sword, sling, crossbow, and bow (and various derivatives of it, like a ballista is just a crossbow on 'roids). EVERYTHING ELSE the military still uses. Knives? Yes. Spears? We call it a bayonet. Hammer? Piss off your combat engineer and he'll show you. Axe? Yep, for certain situations, mostly woodcutting, axes are used (not chainsaws, fuel needed for armour). Though I would argue that an infantryman given a sling would find a way to make it work with his hand grenade.
@@mergele1000 A bayonet is a spear when it's a bayonet, on the end of a 1-2 meter long rifle (which becomes the shaft when it runs out of ammo). When a bayonet is not on the rifle, it is just a knife.
@@SnlDrako Handling of spear and bayonet (on a gun) are so different, pulling them together into any category other than "melee weapon" doesn't make sense. At that point an axe is just a knife.
@@mergele1000 Of course, we all know knives have 0.3-2 meter long handles. have crescent shaped blades with the blade on the outer edge, top heavy, and used for woodcutting. Any other pearls of wisdom from the shortbus?
@@SnlDrako short blade on top of a grip. just like a bayonet is a spear because blade on top of a longer grip. Edit: If you are actually looking at features in a way that makes these distinctions useful you could tell me when the modern military last used a bardiche, a ravens beak or a war chariot.
SEE: 2003 "attack on Karbala, 2003 battle during the Iraq War" to see why the Apache's deep attack mission was deemed "dead" during the Invasion of Iraq.
As a former member of the 30th, even though I ranted often about the dirty thirty, I am glad that the armor still belongs in the battle field. Further more as a former member of the FA I am more than glad that the Queen will always need her King of Battle to mold the battlefield.
Russia has proved the attack helicopter is effective as we've seen numerous convoys of Ukrainian and NATO vehicles destroyed by KA-52 helicopters during Ukraine's failed counteroffensive.
A situation where they were serving the role as tank destroyers. The role that was said in the video to be of limited utility. Meanwhile, the rocket lobbing was serving the role of harassment units. Going in fast, disrupting enemy operations, and leaving. Effective at destroying the enemy? Not really. Effective at fraying the enemies nerves to hell? Absolutely.
A fan from Poland here, I guess the main idea behind the Apache buy is to have sort of mobile anti-armor reserve that can be sent anywhere enemy actually managed to penetrate frontline and stop the attack dead in its tracks - literally. Imagine that sort of reserve in Sedan area 1940 to bolster failing infantry being overrun by Guderians panzers? Also, modern heavy ATGMs can engage enemy as far as 8-10km away, and without need for LOS, thus negating much of the defensive anitair capabilities of the enemy. Russians used their attack helos in that exact way to help stop Ukrainian Zaporozhe offensive in 2023.
Exactly, I think Chieftain has got it backwards here and that the old "tank destroyer" concept where they can mostly operate behind friendly lines is the more practical one for attack helicopters. As you point out, the war in Ukraine has shown deep penetration operations don't work, but acting as mobile artillery is a good use for helicopters.
@@ARCNA442 That's assuming that the opposition are considerate enough to send its battalions forward without supporting assets. One must assume that any attack will be properly co-ordinated and resourced, it's probably going to be a main effort. Anyway, I'm not speculating, I'm saying in this video how NATO countries use their attack helicopter fleets, my sample size is US, UK and France.
@@TheChieftainsHatch Correct, you aren't speculating. However, the plans that you are talking about are speculative since no NATO nation has actually employed attack helicopters in a near peer conflict. The best information we have is what's currently going on in Ukraine, and neither side there is using attack helicopters anywhere close to the NATO doctrine you are talking about.
@@ARCNA442 The US employed attack helicopters in Iraq in 1991 against what were at the time very modern air defenses using the latest Soviet Doctrine. And the same is true for Vietnam as well.
Greetings from Spain. The APACHE was used successfully in the 1991 Gulf War in a very contested airspace. And the TIGER helicopter was designed for a similar or much worse situation, not to mention what we could call "combined arms wings" which is the way NATO air forces fight, something the Russians do not do and the Ukrainians will be able to do in time thanks to Western aviation.
Calling the Gulf War airspace 'very contested' is really not very accurate - we had air superiority from the get-go and rapidly got to air supremacy. We did lose planes, but nothing like what losses would be against an actual near-peer. There's this pervasive myth, that was encouraged by Bush at the time, that Iraq had a top notch military and they were totally a near-peer except... they never were. For an actual example of near-peer casualty rates that we could expect you can just look at Ukraine - where despite the Russians holding most of the cards they still have racked up massive airframe losses that are especially bad for helos and ground-pounders. Because when the enemy can field modern-ish MANPADS and also has an air defense network that you can't effectively suppress the value of low'n'slow degrades pretty fast. Helos aren't dead, but in any P2P conflict their use cases are gonna be pretty marginal as things stand right now. That's just how warfare works - weapons are made, counters are developed, warfare moves in different directions than anticipated when weapons were designed, etc.
EXCELLENT video, sir. While some of the terminology was a bit confusing, the concepts were not - and the validity of the argument was crystal clear. We should not presume that the changing circumstances of tactical use somehow automatically invalidates the usefulness of a weapon / weapon system. As you demonstrated, what may be an appropriate decision for one country may not be appropriate for another.
The war in Ukraine is actually a demonstration that helicopters (not just attack helos) are more survivable than people thought. Both Ukraine and Russia have S-300 and better systems, and they inherited Soviet-era short-range air defense systems that are literally designed to counter NATO's attack helicopters, yet helicopters are still flying. That's because helicopters can navigate around terrain features much more effectively than fixed wing aircraft, allowing them to hide from air defenses, particularly long-range air defenses like the S-300, very well. Also, even against SHORADs, attack helicopters can still get an upper hand in a surprise encounter. I heard that the US Army conducted exercises where AN/TWQ-1 Avengers are pitted against the AH-64s, and the results are in Apache's favor.
Russia has been using ATGM with 10+ km range in order to outrange Ukrainian SHORAD. Attack helicopters caused lots of damage before Ukraine got longer range rockets and started shooting the airfields Russians based their helicopters on.
And most of what helicopters can do there is firing uphill. Russian helicopters are doing things US AT battalion meant to do - over the shoulder support from beyond close AA range. Thing is that you don't need an armored helicopter for that. Rocket truck Blackhawk should do.
Find me any recent footage of an attack helicopter in UA-RU war doing anything besides indirect missile volley in rough direction of an enemy only to run away while firing decoy flares.
Thank you for sharing these insights. I wonder how essential it is for the helicopters to be crewed? Is it essential for them to be armed? Would it be possible to replace helicopters with drones that select targets for long-range missiles (which are basically a long-range artillery)? Why? Or why not?
I feel like you could turn the whole “no the…is not dead” into a series of sorts.
Once land based drones proliferate he'll be able to do one on infantry, because you know people will make the claim.
"no, the infantry men is not dead"
It would be funny if he did a "No the Infantryman is not dead". But it's a overview of the combined arms team, and how the grunt fits in that team.
@@Ungood-jl5ep Infantry being obsolete has been thrown around for about 80 years at this point due to nuclear weaponry.
Yeah like HITCSevens on diverse football issues ("I'm sorry, but we have to talk about X" / "What on Earth is going on at Y?!").
As long as he doesn't start doing Top Seven videos.
A soldier in the peacekeeping forces in the former Yugoslavia told me about how an Apache had come up to support him in a confrontation with a tank, flying just above street level. He and his guys in a humvee had observed said tank coming through town toward their lines. They went to check it out. It was nerve wracking till the attack helo came up. Then the tank’s drivers hatch popped open and out came a civilian. He’d found the tank abandoned, (he claimed) and had stored it in a garage. He’d got wind of the arms buy back program and was looking to sell it.
100% believe this! Eastern Europeans are NUTZ.
Truly, a very suddenly motivated seller.
ngl finding a tank is fucking crazy bro just found it and took it dont blame him i would
@@johngillespie9459 Grand Tank Auto.
The really interesting part is if they actually did pay him.
It's probably quite unhealthy for the civilian but random dudes sealing and turning in ex yugo tanks gotta be great.
Most people did not realize the job of higher military commanders is to make sure the fight is NOT a fair fight.
What's the saying "if you're in a fair fight you've already lost." - or something like that.
Fair fights became old during ww1, boggling to see people today thinking of a gentlemans engagement
"Overkill" is a purely civilian term.
Not just higher ups literally an entire civilization would want to make the fight as unfair as possible (they get the W speedrun)
Sun Tzu figured this out back in BC times
8:03 “Making sure it’s not a fair fight” made me chuckle. My dad always told me growing up that there is no such thing as fighting dirty, and I’ve always heard that if it’s a fair fight you are doing something wrong.
Honestly even just playing strategy games teaches you this.
If you've done things smartly, by the time your forces make contact with the enemy, victory should already be a foregone conclusion.
A fair fight means you've either been taken by surprise or fucked up in some way.
Fair fights have their place in sports. If you are fighting fair in war, you _will_ lose the war.
Protesters cry that it isn't fair.
That's the idea!
One professor during my War Studies BA mentioned "watching the war" during the Gulf War when the 24/7 news cycle was fresh and so suddenly you could literally watch a war live, and he had a distinct memory of an attack helicopter being shown popping up from behind terrain, launching some missiles against an Iraqi collumn, and then vanishing back down with it being obvious the other side never knew it was there. "It didn't really feel sporting, like I knew in me heart that we were the good guys here but it doesn't feel like the good guy thing to do."
We mentioned this to another professor during a class where he was making this point. He refered back to his introductory lecture on why to study War Studies and not War Studies in name that are actually Peace Studies.
"It's a lot nicer to feel bad about war and how awful it is when you win. If you lose, of course it's bloody awful. You LOST. I don't care how well you bounce back, losing a war is always awful. So, win the fight THEN you can feel bad for the other guy."
@@AlexanderSchreiber Even in sports, no one wants a fair fight. As the saying goes "If you ain't cheating, you ain't trying."
Anyone seriously competing will stretch the rules to their limit and break them if they aren't being well enforced. When the Tour de France stripped Lance Armstrong of his titles, they found that so many of the other competitors were also using PEDs that there was no one demonstrably clean that they could award the titles to.
Even when staying within the rules, it's still about avoiding a fair fight. In any team sport, if one side has a weak defender, guess who's going to be picked on all game? If a team has the money and there aren't restrictions on spending, they can spend to try and get the best players, coaches, trainers, equipment, etc. It even happens in cases where one might not think that it's possible. During the Cold War, when playing each other Soviet players often ended games quickly so as to not exhaust themselves mentally and thus were better able to put their all against other players.
Congratulations on the new command by the way Colonel. They couldn’t be in better hands.
I missed either that part of the video or some other announcement. When was that released?
I mentioned it in chat. I take command next week. And thank you, Masada
@@TheChieftainsHatch How does it feel to fight for feminism and gay sex around the world?
@@TheChieftainsHatch "We're gonna need a bigger desk."
- Chieftain's supply Sergeant, probably.
Desk fire drill needed "Oh, S*** the desk is on fire". Yup, can extract safely in less than 10 seconds. No obstructions. Door opens easily.
I remember the attack helicopter gunnery field manual from the mid-1980s going into a LOT of detail on how to do rocket tossing, which shows how serious the threat was considered even then.
Pretty sure even 80's soviet jets could toss dumb bombs with automatic release, you put the hud mark on the target, hold the trigger and climb keeping the wings level whole time and if you didn't roll too much you can land them with non trivial level of accuracy.
considering they'd be staring down hundreds, if not thousands of Tunguskas, Shilkas, Strelas etc from the Soviets.. that.. makes sense xd
@@robertkalinic335 Everyone was toss bombing in the 80's/90's, when you're low level its the best way to attack anything that's defended. You'd also toss about 12 of the things at once so you get a few more rolls of the dice. But bombs are more reliable than rockets for that as they don' t go as far, gravity is much more consistent than solid rocket burns and the booms are much bigger.
Yep , the eighties , when they were relevant agains sandal wearing camel jockeys , wake up .
So ita not just a new a Russian tactic? Wow.
So the Wargame: Red dragon tactic of identifying a gap in the A2/AD net, rushing the enemy's base with helos, blowing up their command units and then bugging out again while cackling like a madman, they're basically TOS. That's awesome! 😂
11:01 - 11:11 they did not identify a gap as such does not exist anymore in real life, they created the gap with electronic jamming planes first. that would mean that you would have to have something like Boeing EA-18G Growlers, too. that could be what he meant by having dozens of fifth gen planes doing that. its just that 1 growler costs 125 million, so dozens (24-36) of them would cost 3-4,5billion, too. Boeing AH-64 Apache costs $52 million. dozens of them (24-36) would cost 1.2B-2Billion. so, you are betting 4,5+2=6,5billion worth of equipment on just this one attack. is it really worth it?
for usa this is no problem, they can afford to lose them in a failed mission they have infinite money, but smaller countries with limited budgets...
they might want to choose 6.5billion worth of cheap drones instead. one first view person drone, according to guardian in 25.1.2024 article in ukraine, is 400 dollars. 6.5b/400 is 16.2 million drones. even if you use million drones a year, you can fight 16 years with that, sending 2700 drones every single day.
------------
also, you can use cheap drones in different creative ways, like
" Russia deploys cheap drones to locate Ukraine's air defences" - reuters, July 26, 2024
"..are produced from materials like foam plastic and plywood, the official told Reuters.
One type carries a camera and a Ukrainian mobile phone SIM card to send images back to the Russian military.
The new Russian drones with cameras do not carry explosives but closely resemble regular Shahed drones and fly with groups of them, Cherniak said.
The second new type of drone contains no explosive charge or only a small one and is being used as a decoy, Cherniak added.
Because it is virtually indistinguishable from a regular attack drone from the ground, it still needs to be shot down, revealing where Ukraine's air defence systems are located.
"They identify where our mobile groups are positioned, where the machine guns are that can destroy them. They're trying ... to get a picture of where all our air defences are located," said Andriy Cherniak, a military spy agency spokesperson.
The drones can also fly at an altitude of 1,000 m (3,000 ft), putting them out of range of machine guns and automatic rifles, he said."
i guess they use long range cameras to snap pictures from 1kilometer away in the sky with the drone. like a mini satellite.
@@Redmanticore That sort of calls into question - if you need dozens of aircraft to support your helicopter raid, why not just have the aircraft conduct the raid themselves faster and with heavier weapons?
@@ARCNA442 Isn't it payload capacity? Anything as stealthy as a low flying helicopter doesn't have the same kind of firepower or ability to find targets? Right?
@@ARCNA442 fixed wing aircraft can't stay on station and fight in a sustained way, especially behind enemy lines. Further ... the threats to each are different. The frontline AD threatens helicopters as Chieftan noted. But those assets are kept at the front and are thinner in the rear. Meanwhile, heavier AD is denser in the rear, and threatens fixed wing assets more and more the closer they get. So attrition rates for fixed wing missions go up the deeper they go into the battlespace, while the inverse is true for rotary.
@@ARCNA442 you can try that in a Wargame-like game and see how it goes: enemy long-range radar AA covers rear areas as well against aircraft strikes, but if you can get helos around behind the front, you can hit their lines of reinforcement far enough back that they can't reach you. In Wargame: Red Dragon, you might be facing Patriots that can't even target helos ingame. And in WARNO and Broken Arrow, attack helos can often outrange or match radar AA's range against low altitude targets so they're more of a threat to long range AA than the reverse. With the 101st Airborne in WARNO, you can use their Quick Fix jammer Blackhawk to lower radar AA accuracy and then engage them with Hellfires from their Apaches. And in Broken Arrow you can get helos with ARMs and the Russians even have one carrying cruise missiles, helos can be very effective at hunting radar AA when used properly.
It always drives me crazy in those games the way most people use their helos though - they send them one at a time directly at the front line, every enemy AA unit focuses their fire on them and they die immediately, then they send in the next one...if you do what they're talking about in this video and send a squad of them on a raid deep behind enemy lines, almost no one keeps enough short-ranged AA with their backline units to defend them properly, and you can rip through whatever they have. Especially in team games, you can destroy multiple players' artillery parks and take out all their unprotected reinforcements with a sudden attack helo strike.
The Chieftain is to armoured vehicles what Ian McCollum is to firearms.
Hugely knowledgeable, and able to be informative and infinitely watchable.
Oh man! Hell yeah!!! I remember watching an episode of Forgotten Weapons and Chieftain was in it with Ian!!! Awesome episode!!!!!
Father Tank.
And also remember in both cases: deeply steeped in the *US-centric viewpoint* and frequently unable to take themselves out of it.
"Tank Jesus?"
@@iatsd Not only demonstratively false, but an odd thing to accuse an Irish man of. As for Ian, there aren't too many English speaking countries aside from the US that have the laws, culture and collections to make forgotten weapons possible, so I really don't see your point. I'm not American FYI
4:50
I was prepared for the Dwight D Eisenhower jumpscare
Yep. Rewound the video to confirm the name, _"Did he just say...?"_
@@johnsteiner3417 i knew he was old but i thought that was a bit much
@@JanJansen985 Suspect he might be a Witcher after a barber saw to the unruly hair.😁
LETS GET BIZZAY
What a crazy career to have, where everyone you work with is highly conscious of your name.
"The question is whether you actually _needed_ those capabilities, and a lot of militaries _don't."_
*Bundeswehr procurement official: **_"You rang?!"_*
Do they still exist?
@@naamadossantossilva4736they do, to procure more procurement bureaucrats, a vital bundeswehr resource
The Case of the Bundeswehr is indeed curious. Because the are not divesting from the Attack Helicopter, but plan to switch to a much lighter form of it. So first we would need to know what the Bundeswehr needs their non-transport helicopters to to.
@@naamadossantossilva4736
What do you mean?
@naamadossantossilva4736
They still operate some tigers, but plan to phase them out. They will be replaced by H145M with side mounted weapons. Similar to the Bo-105P
So reduced capability, but heavily reduced price.
I understand Japan is having, or looking down the road at, serious manpower shortages. It's entirely possible that they looked at the AH mission-set they would be using and came to the conclusion that drones, autonomous or not, reduced their manpower and costs much more than the reduction of capability and decided it was worthwhile to wind down their AH units.
I think converting the AH into a unmanned platform or remotely operated platform would be the best use of them. Attack helicopters doesn't require them to be manned necessarily,
@@davidmclean357 Most attack helicopters have two crew members. On average that's about 360-400 pounds of humans and gear. Remove the seats, human-use controls (replace with actuators), put in heavily shielded (against EW) cages, and computers inside those cages (derived from OTS) and you have a drone. Since you've already paid for the AH, the only cost of the drone is the substitute "crew". These could be remotely tasked (not directly flown like trad drones) and the computer can probably react faster than the human crews to threats.
@@goetzliedtke That is my thinking, the role of the copter is still critical but keeping the pilots remote or possible AI assisted just makes sense anyway.
They aren't planning to fight on land anytime soon, and over sea rotor craft do jobs almost entirely replaceable with unnamed and arguably even fully automated drones. The sole exception being search and rescue, and oh look, they have a massive program for more dedicated search and rescue helicopters.
Their only two real jobs are anti-submarine warfare, which can be automated easily and requires external communication to be effective anyway, and recon.... which also requires communication to matter anyway. Bonus points, when doing SIGINT missions from a destroyer with a drone you can switch to a smaller bungee launch and recovery fixed wing drone, and your mission time goes up by literally 8 times while costs go to the floor. Hell, you can even have 6+ drones up at once checking different spots and triangulating, vs your solo helo trying to do three jobs at once.
@@goetzliedtkeeven with those "cages", you'll still require a way to give commands to said drone, and in intense EW environment it gonna be tricky. However, if you replace just some of the AH with drones and task the remaining AHs' gunners with managing them, and stay in the line of sight (that allows narrow beam UHF or even laser communication), that may actually work.
There's an old Willy's G.I. Joe cartoon where the jetpack wearing supersoldier is flying over a WW2 infantry grunt, and the grunt asks "What you got to dig holes?"
The jetpacker had the surprised Pikachu face (the cartoon was c. 1945).
Pulls a phaser, excavates 2m x 3m hole.
The SAS and special boat service are now equipped with jet packs!
to quote the US army... "human legs make poor landing gear"
@@womble321 Just the Royal Marines...
Every US service member not in an org decented from the contatal army... "What are thyese mythical trenches you speak of?" Like serrouly when ever has member of the US navy, marines or chaost needed to dig a tranch? Heck the space force gardian has much more reason to then a navy seal or marine!
Love your channel, especially the previous M1128 video since it always seemed like an ambiguous vehicle. My grandfather was a tanker with the Polish II Corps (4th Armored Regiment/2nd Warsaw Armored Brigade) in WWII at Monte Cassino, and I've always wondered what he went through, in that crammed space, in a foreign land. I've always been very fascinated in armor because of his experiences, and your channel is the epitome of armored history. Watching your videos helps me respect the struggle my grandfather went through more.
Last time i was this early Chieftain was still in the Irish military.
😂
I love the operational information. This kind of Chieftain videos helps framing so much of the the thinking behind vehicles, weapons and desired capabilities. There is a good, carefully considered reason, obvious or not, correct in the long run or not, for most of the stuff an army requires.
"The soldier is now obsolete with my new Gatling Gun" - Mr Gatling.
There's been new innovations in war for a long time now and while some things have become obsolete, nowhere near as many as have been predicted.
Well, I would argue that Mr Gatling was right. He made the whole way of organizing infantry based attacks obsolete.
@@sir0herrbatka But the soldiers didn't stop being conscripted, they just changed their tactics.
Bombers were to make armies obsolete as be bombed before reaching you
@@Treblaine Yes, but if changing tactics could mean that attack helicopter is replaced with just… a transport helicopter armed with longer range weapons.
@@sir0herrbatka Isn't that basically the Mil Mi-24? A sort of flying IFV? The russians have had them since the 70s.
The thing a lot of people forget is that combined arms warfare is a team sport. Every asset brings with it capabilities that punch above their individual weight. Getting Apaches going after air defence was a critical element of desert storm. Now think of some juicy targets like airports, logistics hubs etc etc. thats deep battle doctrine. Its not just hitting deep targets, its telling your enemy that all similar targets are fair game the next day. Rinse and repeat. I have been involved with a few Flag exercises, its great that the army is playing along. And, for anyone that thinks helicopters are too vulnerable, think again.
Had to listen to that distance twice to believe it. The prospect of 24 Apaches 250+Km behind the front line doing what they do best is a scary one.
Probably scariest for the Apaches. Sometimes all it takes is someone with a rifle in the wrong building. Or a manpad. They really need to pick their targets and paths carefully. Yes, Ukrainians have put Cessnas through the first line of air defenses, but they probably lost some and the Russians haven't exactly been great with their defenses.
@@Andreas-gh6isRussian Helos have defensive systems that will spoof a MANPAD, and when they are loaded and functioning, simply require the pilot to observe, orient, decide, and act to defeat the threat. This is extraordinarily difficult while flying above the trees - but not transmission towers, power lines, etc. - with all your mental bandwidth dedicated to your task.
The Apache defeats the threat before you know what is happening, and then lets you know.
@@geekstradamus1548 One apache has been shot down with an antique hunting rifle. I get that Apache's are hot shit. I still don't think they are all that survivable in freaky situations and with the proliferation of all sorts of manpads or even anti tank missiles...
@@geekstradamus1548 in the modern day, even a consumer grade multicopter drone could be a threat to helicopters, especially when standing still.
@@Andreas-gh6is You have come across a lot of bad dope, so let me straighten out one story for you - dope in this connotation means data, not weed.
You’re referring to a farmer near Karbala, Iraq that claimed to have shot down an Apache with a Kar98. This Apache was one of 31 from 1/227 Aviation and 6-6 CAV used in that attack, all others returned. CWO Williams and Young were captured, I’m sure you’ll remember seeing the propaganda video released by the Iraqis is you look it up.
During their mission there was everything from small arms, to heavy MG, to 30mm, and missiles filling the sky. Williams even got shit in the foot by a bullet that penetrated the cockpit.
The aircraft was eventually hit and taken out by a BMP. They got as far as they could, landed, and tried to escape on foot.
The farmer Ali something - not joking his first name is Ali, maybe that will help you find his video - and his grandson found the aircraft and contacted authorities. When they showed up, they had him make a propaganda video where he claimed he shot it down. He later said he was forced to lie, and never got the money Sadaam promised him.
The Apache was destroyed by an airstike shortly after.
Now, the fact you believed a man armed with a Kar98 got so lucky as to plink an Apache out of the sky - tells me it’s pointless for me to try and explain how things are. It’s probably about a 1:50M shot. You’d have to believe there have been 50,000,000 times a farmer has shot an “antique hunting rifle” at an Apache to believe there’s a 50/50 chance that story is true. Assuming you’re young enough not to remember the specifics of the story, and have never served in any capacity whatsoever so that you’d have no reason to have come across the facts of the story, and yet are so incurious as to have never bothered looking up such a fantastical claim but simply accepted it on face value, and the spew it out as though you’d have the first clue as to its veracity - you do this with military matters, do you do it with medial concerns? Do you share the same unfounded opinions regarding cancer treatments? Or repairing transmissions on 2003 Ford F-150s? How to groom a dog or keep your cockatoo healthy?
Or are you just drawn inexorably to military matters you have no experience in, play some games and watch some videos, read four books, and now you are fully qualified to fall for rank Baathist propaganda that is laughably preposterous - and ACTUALLY repeat it?!?
Well, have at me, my arthritic thumbs and fingers are absolutely brings after all that, so I’m out. Enjoy your week. Enlist and live it before you find yourself spending everyday of the last 30 years of your life regretting not doing it.
remember folks, if nothing can replace the function of an equipment, then that equipment it not outdated, unless you have another equipment that can do the fulfill that role much better,so no, tanks and attack helis are not "outdated"
You don't need another equipment to fill that role. If that equipment can no longer fulfill that role, it's obsolete whether there is a replacement for it or not. See body armor. At some point it went from full plate to cuirass before it going away entirely. WW1 tried to revive body armor but none of those worked particularly well. For most of the 20th century, body armor was obsolete and there were no successor. We got ceramic plates and kevlar vests now but we didn't just keep using steel cuirass just because we didn't get a successor yet.
The key take away is whether said equipment can best fill a specific relevant niche/role. Warfare and doctrine will change when a role can no longer be effectively filled regardless of how important that role otherwise was.
The constant question a commander asks is what of my assets I have that can do objective "x, y, or z". The commander asks this, knowing that a battlefield is a place where machinery and troops get broken and destroyed. Remove specific weapons like helicopters or tanks from the scenario; if his troops only have sticks to hit the enemy with, upon the procurement of rock 2.0, the commander is not going take away all of his troops sticks. At least until some smart person comes up with stick 3.0 or combines a sharp rock to a stick to create a spear 1.0.
@@neurofiedyamato8763 But body armour was still around, it just wasn’t as prevalent as it is today (it wasn’t exactly standard issue during the 19th or 18th centuries).
For starters there’s obviously the introduction of steel helmets as standard issue during WW1. There’s also steel body armour for the torso as issued to German machine gunners, and reinforcing helmet plates. During WW2, flak vests became standard issue to bomber crews, and already by the time Korea rolled around, flak vests had become standard infantry equipment in hot spots.
What had in fact happened was precisely what you argued hadn’t happened, or didn’t need to happen: namely that the millennia old steel body armour had been replaced by ceramic and kevlar body armour. The employment of steel body armour had fluctuated prior to that, but it from the time before Rome was even a collection of agrarian villages to the time of Vietnam, steel body armour had nonetheless been found in the field.
Strangely enough, I think I heard that somewhere....
Oh, yeah. It was the topic of this video... 🙄
Attack helos are not outdated but are as obsolete as when they were built - but they only exist because of the peace treaty between the US Army, Navy and Air Force at Key West. They are a solution to the US Army's need for on call air support, as was done in 1944, in the era of an independent US Air Force, which allows the US army wings or guns, but not both.
What's old is new again.
You're spot-on.
What many "laymen" on the internet don't fully grasp is the distinction between combined-arms maneuver warfare, and the last twenty years of COIN, as the MG stated in your clip.
Pink teams and direct support of troops in contact are what is commonly mischaracterized as "what attack helos do" nowadays.
You can tell from my avatar I'm of the old-skool too, although all of my combat time was spent in the COIN years.
Although maneuver warfare is back in the schoolhouse, there aren't many of us left that recognize the "Corps Deep Fight" graphic you showed.
FM 17-95 is the Old Testament, and the new disciples are learning the lessons!
Scouts Out!
Even as an infantry guy, the old TMs are the best for conventional large scale maneuver warfare, and fm 17-95, the end all be all of cavalry operations is an excellent source of knowledge.
Also a lot of people tend to look at military equipment in a vacuum instead of as part of a combined arms whole. The closest it gets is the "rock-paper-scissors" mentality that leads to stupid claims like the subject of this video.
Cringe
Hallelujah!
Who would have thought that in war that military aircraft would get shot down? That's just ridiculous, it would never happen unless it was obsolete, right?
And same with tanks too, of course. So many praises sung to western tanks in the Ukraine war, then Ukraine fielded them and some inevitably got knocked out. Suddenly so many turned to "western tanks are actually terrible and obsolete, long live drones!" And now you have people even right here suggesting that militaries should replace their entire air forces with millions of commercial drones, lol
@@CMDKeenCZ just people thinking the m1a1 is completely invincible
A very enlightening video, but what I really appreciate is you flattening the term "Congressman or Congresswoman" to "Congress-critter." It is doubtful I will ever do mission planning for a flight of Apaches, but I will be referencing my Congress-critter in casual conversation from now on.
Behold, the Government Organis...
"...ation?"
...m.
I mean they could just say congressperson. It is tongue and cheek, but congresscritter could be seen as dismissive and disrespectful.
@@jordannoell4222You make it sound like dissing politicians is a bad thing...
@@jordannoell4222 I think that's the point. 😂
@@jordannoell4222 They're both equally dehumanising titles.
I suspect the fundamental issue isn't that these systems like tanks or attack helicopters are obsolete as a class. I suspect the problem is more that most of the "modern" design in use, are at least 40 years old if not older. Meanwhile there have been a lot of advancements in munitions design, surveillance and fire control. In the classic attack vs. defence balance, such older systems their defensive values, so don't be detected, acquired, hit, penetrated etc, have arguably degraded much faster than the attacking capabilities that newer munitions have given such older weapon systems.
I suspect that if a brand new attack helicopter or tank would be designed now, taking into account all the technological advances of the last decades, it would not be called obsolete at all. As for AH-64 in US service. Well those are arguably by far the most modernised of the older attack helicopter designs around. That means massive sensor suite and fire control enhancements to be able to survey a much more dangerous battlefield and be able to operate in such an environment. Not all attack helicopter designs are so lucky.
What I feel is happening in Ukraine is fundamentally two mostly 1970s and 1980s level technology armies clashing in the 2020s. There have been at least four decades where munitions have been specifically developed to defeat 1980s level defensive technology. And guess what, that is happening. I feel that if there is a lesson to be learned, it would be that the (not upgraded) 1970s and 1980s stuff needs to go. That stuff had a very long lifespan, but its outdated because it was all designed and produced before the massive developments in computer technology took place. These days, you have way more computing power in your smartphone than these systems have for their sensor and fire control systems. And on a battlefield where such massive surveillance capabilities are now a reality, you arguably need to be able to detect and evade or engage threats even faster.
It's a pretty fair assessment, I think. I came to a similar conclusion discussing tanks in use in Ukraine over on one of the military history visualized videos: the modern stuff is good, the really old stuff is efficient if limited, but the intermediate/ late cold war stuff just doesn't really suit.
So the Comanche is going to make a glorious return then?
@@TheChieftainsHatch
When it comes to drones and tanks, I firmly believe that whoever invents the cheapest automatic-drone-shooting-gun-turret is going to be a very rich person.
The requirements will be:
1) Cheap
2) Uses a standard weapon, like the American rifle calibre infantry machine gun whose code I can't remember. The one up from the M249.
3) Passive always on 360° stereo visual light and thermal sensor, optional radar and laser range but off by default, don't radiate unless you have to
4) Probably use a bit of machine learning to identify targets and track their course.
4) Can be easily mounted on and powered by every motor vehicle line Tanks, APCs, Truck, etc.
You stamp them out by the thousand and put them where the CROWS turrets go or it can magnetically attach with powered electromagnets to a flat piece of the vehicle.
You just have to be very careful about not shooting below a safety boundary so you don't accidentally shoot your own infantry guys in the head.
@@Marinealver i think the donut radar on the ah64d essentially allows it to perform the same role as a Comanche, no?
@@TheChieftainsHatchThere’s a defense economics issue with this gear that you have to address at some point. A modern Iowa would probably be more useful in the Red Sea than a bunch of Burkes. It would also be ludicrously expensive. When you adjust for inflation a WW2 Sherman costs about 400-500 thousand 2024 dollars. We also had the ability to build them quickly & at the scale. They were also relatively uncomplicated & easy to use, fix & modify. They were also fairly light, which made them useful in a wide variety of settings.
Modern tanks (and choppers) are complex, exceedingly expensive & cannot be built nearly as quickly or in large quantities. Their logistics trail is also more complex & expensive. They can’t operate effectively in nearly as many environments as they used to & protecting them against modern sensors and guided weapons makes them even more cost prohibitive.
There are still places where horses are the best and most reliable form of transportation. And unlike a car a horse that’s spent a lot of time with you actually CAN get you home safely when you’re drunk. That doesn’t mean we should go all in on Horse 2.0.
If I remember correctly, one of the first shots fired during Desert Storm where from Apaches that took out a search radar.
I swear people would keep on coming with these "X is dead" or "X is obsolete" forever. Next thing you know we'll get a "human infantrymen are obsolete/dead... robots are the new normal" lol.
'Its ded because I say it is!' Is the new norm, especially on the internet.
Politicians would love to use that line that "the soldier/sailor is obsolete" in order to take money away from Defence budgets, until a neighbour turns into a bully or people get wise to the kickbacks coming from the sales of equipment and bases. Or both.
Nothing worse than an undefended pissed off electorate baying for political blood.
Thanks Elon Musk. Hope he isn't appointed to butcher the defense budget.
@Edax_Royeaux why would he do that when he can get funding for his toys from that no matter how many lives get wasted? It is not like he cares about American lives any more than good ol' Donald does.
Counterpoint: The following are dead
Battleships
Cavalry
The infantry line
The sword
The pike
Railroad artillery
This is before things evolved into something else. The attack helicopter seems rather likely to be evolved out into something else.
Professionals scoffed at naval aviation too. I'd still have attack helicopters, but I wouldn't have confidence in their being an effective platform into the 2050s.
the tank is not dead, the attack helicopter's not dead, the 5th generation multi-role aircraft isn't dead either
The helicopter mission described here relies on air supremacy to the depth of 500 km over enemy territory.
That's a completely unrealistic assumption.
Mss production can drop costs down, drones are plenty smart enough to find huge IR and noise emitters , you can stick acoustic sensors every square miles for a few $ and network them together using cell towers or a solar-powered mesh network which should be good enough seeing they don't need to provide much data but aircraft sound signatures.
Once the track is known, the enemy, even if they don't have air supremacy knows you're coming.
Ugg's smashy stick not dead neither!
JGSDF's helicopter retirement plan does not represent other militaries' attitudes either. For one, they don't have a large recon & attack helo fleet to begin with, not to mention most of them are old AH-1s and trouble-laden OH-1s. JGSDF doesn't have a big budget and lacks personnel severely. In addition, they are transforming their force structure to one that is suited to long-range engagements over the Pacific, where Apaches are hardly useful. New SSM and SAM regiments need people to man, so cutting off the least useful units makes perfect sense. In any case the PLAGF across the pond to Japan not only do not find attack helos to be obsolete, but they find their current Z-10s to be inadequate and are acquiring their own Apache counterpart.
Japan is also not planning on fighting any land wars anytime soon, and helicopters are vastly more vulnerable when fighting at sea, where every surface ship is rocking some kind of extreme range sam now, and there's nowhere to hide.
They also only have three real jobs at sea, SIGINT, ASW, and search and rescue. Japan is buying more search and rescue helicopters, and the other two can be fantastically done with drones, and both require communication to other assets anyway so jamming mission kills a manned helicopter anyway: unless you're planning on operating a helicopter large enough to carry an anti-sub torpedo and a sonar buoy at the same time, but even America is shying away from that going forward.
It's just so hard to compete against 8+ fixed wing signals drones, and 3 mono-copter drones launched from one destroyer, vs trying to do all that work with just a single manned helicopter. Half of the fixed wing drones cover intermediate communications, the three rotor drones sound with the buoys, and the other fixed wing drones carry the air dropped torpedo's to the site when a sub is detected. You can do more from the same hanger than you can with a manned asset.
@@ASDeckard I mean I don't understand how anyone can say helicopters are not useful at sea when the US navy/maruines abuses all of theirs and one of the ways the US army wants to fight in the pacfic is staioning apaches on super carreirs... Like attacke helicopter are isnanly useful when combined with ships honce why ever navy that can afford a polane carrier has helicopter ones including Japan by the way which they just got... Also the marines still you cobras an acnet farme off their assault carrier all the time even now when they have F-35s... lIke it makes more sense for Japan to have helicopters then F-35s as they are much cheaper and faster to turn around while carring mucgh more then 4 weapons at a time which the F-35 can't VTOL with a full loadout... which I don't think Japan's heli destroys has STOL abilities... So yeah if anything Japan having a helicopter only airfornce makes the most sense then having all land based fighters that can't fioght china with out US help...
@@ASDeckard Japan being an island nation also does not risk having enemy armored divisions with thousands of tanks and IFV's flooding over their border. I would say that Japan plans to make a landing so difficult that not even a single enemy tank will reach Japanese soil. With this in mind investing in an attack helo fleet to fight a landwar on Japanese territory is not the best investment.
@@GreenBlueWalkthrough JS Kaga was hosting USMC and RAF F-35s for trials just the other week.
Always love how you're able to explain things so clearly for everyone regardless of their experience. Great vid as always :)
Not a real expert on military planning for equipment and tactics, but being a 20 year veteran of Armored Cavalry, I still occasionally get asked about the relevance of tanks and helicopters by people who have been watching clips from the invasion of Ukraine. I’m glad to find out that 30 years after retiring that my impression is about the same as yours. By the way, Love that Blackhorse shirt. That was my first assignment (originally the 14th ACR) 53 years ago.
thank you for your service.
Roles for equipment change over time as do the manuals that define and describe those roles. A changing modern battlefield doesn't mean something is destined for the scrapyard, just that it needs its role or purpose rewritten a bit.
When will you do "No the Trebuchet is not Dead" ??
I'll look for the doctrinal manual and check if there's a current use.
@@stvdagger8074 : modern trebuchet =artillery/rockets
They're not dead, they evolved.
@@ProfessorFickleA trebuchet is probably a bit more stealthy than artillery or MLRS. Probably a _very_ niche use case, and there are a lot of downsides.
@@alexandermonro6768 I’ll agree that a trebuchet is more stealthy than a howitzer the day you can show me one with sufficient range that it doesn’t need to be so close to the enemy that he can recognise the individual soldier firing it at him.
Aahh! I love it when I hear the sound of true sanity spoken, especially when it's from the Chieftain!!
So basically they’re going back to the cavalry job, instead of just being tank destroyers.
PS: love the Aer Lingus model on the shelf.
This deep penetration raid role of the attack helicopter somehow sounds even more suicidal than the frontline fire support role.
At least for the latter, newer longer ranged missiles can mitigate some danger.
All going to be about how and where your using them as much as anything - For instance a deep penetration of Russian lines in this current conflict for an attack helicopter looks like it would be pretty darn easy really - really dangerous no doubt, but actually fairly easy. If the really cheap, easy to spot and shoot down drones that have almost no brains can make it a real pilot with all that human intelligence and likely a very good briefing on the known and expected locations of dangers to plot a similarly safe route to the target can too. The front is just too long to really harden, so zipping though to mess up the logistic train etc would be quite plausible if Ukraine actually had top of the line attack helicopters and pilots for them now.
"The idea that a war can be won by standing on the defensive and waiting for the enemy to attack is a dangerous fallacy, which owes its inception to the desire to evade the price of victory." Douglas Haig.
War was always costly,to win you need to do some stupid and almost suicidal shit.
@@naamadossantossilva4736 Except that almost all war is a scam. You win wars by not getting into them to begin with.
@@nomorerainbows
And yet it wasnt Sweden Turkey or Spain finding themselves at the head of the international community was it?
@@nomorerainbows You are being naive.Evil "people" exist and will force you to war.
Just look at the last 2.Neither Ukraine nor Israel could just not get into war.
I don't believe this is a realistic scenario in a near-peer war. In Ukraine, the reason drones are managing to penetrate deep behind the lines is saturation / numbers game - tons of them get shot down, but some of them get through because the enemy ran out of missiles or they flew through a gap in the defense (and no, you can't always identify those gaps before the attack).
This is possible because drones are cheap, but it does not work for more expensive drones like the TB-2 which cost about $5million, or the Russian equivalents. Modern attack helicopters are an order of magnitude more expensive. If half of your helis got shot down during a mission it's a catastrophe.
Russian attack helicopters were still somewhat useful but they did not do any deep penetration(after the first day), they lobbed missiles while flying low ~10km behind FLOT.
Yeah, saying "Ukrainian drones prove this is possible" while ignoring the fact that both sides have given up on using actual helicopters in this manner is sort of a selective reading of current events.
That's the thing, though. "near-peer".
If there are one nation who got the resouces and will to make sure they never, ever get into a situation they have anyone so close in capability they are considered a near-peer, it's the US.
@@Winged_Gunsknecht China is near-peer to the US. And the video is not specifically about the US.
@@ARCNA442 What? The Ukrainian Spring offensive was smashed with attack helicopters.
The US Army has intended the Apache to be a deep penetration asset literally since the day it entered service.
It's mission was never CAS until the GWoT era.
It's mission was deep penetration "battlefield shaping" operations.
Thank you for the close/rear/deep explanation; that's a thing I sort-of knew but getting it spelt out like that was super helpful in understanding how modern militaries expect to funciton.
I was lucky enough to make a career in Army Aviation.
My mos was 16s. They decided to take the armed reconnaissance helicopter away. The powers that be said that we could use drones for that. Now my understanding is that the Army is looking for a new Armed Reconnaissance Helicopter. I believe that politics plays into it more than needs to be. Thank you so much for the knowledge and experience that you share with us. I always enjoy watching.
I came to the Chieftain's channel for the historical armor. While here, I've come to love these occasional insights into current military thought from a serving officer. This stuff is gold. :)
The thing is that most products can have multiple uses. Any individual product in a category can be more or less useful in a new role. The questions are: What compromises do you take by giving this product a new role? Would a product designed specifically for the new role be better and if so how would it be better? We have to be clear about these questions and the opportunity cost of adopting a new platform versus other uses for the money. I don't have an answer in this case, but we do have to be careful about repurposing existing platforms.
never trust people who use the word "product" in every sentence.
@blasterofmuppets4754 Like you just did?
Yup, mission creep has ruined many a reasonably useful thing!
These are some of my favorite types of videos. Taking things and putting them into context, something you excel at. Like your videos on France leading up to and in the start of WWII and your video on how the US got ready for WWII.
I do my best
Well i was in a National Guard Attack Battalion for 10 years. We trained for the exact mission you describe before the GWOT. We would rely on stealth, speed and our superior night vision equipment to succeed. Also, even though we were a division asset we basically worked for the corps level HQ, because a division didn't have the organic assets to support our deep missions. But with Apaches costing $40mil today plus the two man crew, the prevalence of cheap drones with good night vision operating at higher altitudes, watching every sector of the battlefield, the risk is too great. Our use of darkness and low level infiltration are no longer survivable. Maybe they could get to the target, but they could never get home without significant losses. We could do it in the 90's but not today. High level survaillance and cheap one way attack drones are the future for this role.
Most people have no idea that the Apache was a deep attack asset, and not a CAS asset. Going all the way back to the earliest versions of the Airland battle.
And the real question is, could you do it in the 90s?
All it takes is one report to get through to the opfor airforce, and you will be filled full of Vympels faster than you can turn around. Or for an enterprising ZSU2 or ia to be in the wrong place at the right time.
Helicopters are just too fragile, their only possible defence is range, which they cant really guaruantee to maintain in a penetration assault.
I can see it as a hail mary, or flying over terrain definitely not occupied by hostile forces, but then you still count on a poorly defended final target caught by surprise.
great video, when I served in Europe, I remember at one briefing, if you see Apaches in action, that means something went seriously wrong and they are going to plug the hole, stop the breach of that section of front. they are that valuable of a asset. that was back in the late 80s, and they still rocking it.
I wish the Army would teach us things like this. I know as a lowly E5, it's not immediately pertinent to what I do, but stuff like this does give a broader perspective on how amd why we do what we do. Death-by-powerpoint and BS ALMS classes don't cut it.
Great video as always. Also I like that amongst all the tanks on the shelf there is an Aer Lingus 737 hiding on the top right.
Did you catch the BAe 146 on the middle shelf?
@@TheChieftainsHatch Whoa I missed that one, a legendary plane. Tough as nails!
There’s also an additional consideration.
How long before drone pods are developed FOR helicopters and probably also high altitude awacs/130-gunship style aircraft.
Drones are a supplementary tool, not an outright replacement of vast swathes of other equipment.
Why would you install a drone pod on a attack helicopter? Just use transport helicopter.
How long? At least five years back!
You get a like good sir. Very well put together argument.
You get straight to the point, no unnecessary weight. Cleanly laying out the situation with just the right amount of nuance.
I was skeptical coming in to watch this, turns me around a bit.
A few years back I was in a small field with my SAIGA 12g shotgun shooting down steel plates. To one side was my camouflaged lightweight Land Rover under some trees. I looked left and saw an Apache hovering a couple of hundred feet up and probably three hundred yards away just having a look at this weird person with an AK. Yes the saiga looks like an AK because it is but chambered for shotgun shells. This was in East Anglia, England. Now.
1. How did it spot me in the first place to bother having a look?
2. How come it was so quiet. I mean really, really quiet.
I think I waved but to be honest my reaction was more surprise.
The tail rotors were designed to be quieter than usual ones due to how they are offset. Nice to know a helicopter larger than an Abrams can creep-up on people
1. That chin-mounted sensor node is _scary._
2. This isn't actually new, but with careful design you can direct the sound of a helicopter's rotors down and behind its direction of travel. The earliest helicopter I know of with that design consideration was the S-67 Blackhawk, which was effectively an American version of the Hind, but so fast that it had airbrakes on its winglets.
@@griffinfaulkner3514 Not to be confused with the SH-60 Black hawk. Just so people know, the S-67 was a prototype attack helicopter that never really seemed to go anywhere.
Excellent as always. Have an excellent rest of the weekend and the start of Advent.
Oh, yup, its the start of advent👍🏻
The Apache has *always* been a deep strike asset. Even back during the Land Air battle days. In 2003 the US had a whole Brigade of Apaches pretty thoroughly rekt in a single deep strike using these very tactics (See: Battle of Karbala)
Only because of Afghanistan did the Apache become a CAS asset. Back in the 80s-90s it was never intended to perform CAS.
And that was only from being shot at by a bunch of heavy machineguns and primitive autocanons, now imagine a near peer adversary with a bunch of shilka/gepard equivalents and SAMs around the place lol...
@@CalgarGTX Or even overflying any modern combat unit with a healthy dose of modern MANPADs missiles at their disposal.
If the Apaches had overflown so much as a company of long retired obsolete Vulcan PIVADS there's a good chance not a single one of the Apache's would've survived.
It's also important to note that this was a preplanned ambush by the Iraqis. They had studied US apache operations and knew what was coming, and where it was coming to. Our enemies read our deep attack doctrine too, and they were waiting for it.
The deep battle can work, but the Apaches path has to be cleared with immediately on tap ATACMs or MLRS fire support, or even fixed wing escorting assets like A-10s. These were two of the major lessons of the Battle of Karbala. The third major lesson was the same lesson we didn't learn when the F-117 was shot down over Yugoslavia: Ingress and egress routes need to be unpredictable.
Not to mention that the Apache has almost no air to air capability at all if it stumbles into some air threats on the way in.
Fortunately since all the US does is beat up on 3rd rate powers, the Apache should remain viable for the foreseeable future.
@@Fury-161
If we have to clear the path via ground based fire, and support the rotary asset via fixed wing asset, then why not just send in the fixed wing asset to start with?
Also, doesnt usaf determined that a10 is not survivable against a peer adversary? Then how is apache suddenly more survivable?
@@CalgarGTX Apaches on deep strikes are supposed to have ATACMs support and not overfly urban areas. Guess what happened in the real world though.
@@CalgarGTX But new Barracuda missile has 120 miles range. So it's a missile sniper.
My Papaw served with the Blackhorse in Vietnam from 70-71. He was in B company, and a gunner on the Stalking Rhino. Thank you for your service, sir.
I learned something about modern attack helicopter doctrine. Thank you.
The AH-64E is also probably one of the best protected if not the best protected helicopter in the world since it can remotely operate drones like a global hawk flying well above the ceiling of close in defense systems and identify them in advance, it's front arc is protected by a jammer that protects it from at least anything short of a Pantsir, and it is increasingly being equipped with highly effective DIRCM pods such as the Terma AMASE from the Danish which provide reliable protection against contemporary manpads.
I think this misses the point that air defence is going to massively proliferate to account for the ubiquitous presence of UAS. Even if attack helicopters can conduct a penetration, they are going to find rear echelons with extensive counter measures. It’d would be like Karbala but everyone has the extensive capabilities to shoot down something that flies.
Anti drone systems (with exceptions) are generally much less capable of shooting down larger aircraft like Helicopters of Fixed wings. Mostly due to the fact that anti drone systems are *specifically* designed to be as cheap to shoot as possible, leaving the defence against actual aircraft to already existing assets because the already existing assets were too expensive to reasonably use against drones.
So most anti drone systems end up being: Jammers, Lasers, SHORAD (think something like the Gepard or Tunguska, or a newer system like a Phalanx, or MANTIS), or literally just a dude wielding a shotgun loaded with birdshot. The only two out of those that are a real threat to Helos are Lasers and SHORAD.
They already had to avoid SHORAD, so nothing changes there, and lasers are currently not very capable of shooting down anything larger than a drone or missile, though they *can* technically down a Helicopter, they are much more likely to eat a hellfire before they do much to it beyond burning the paint or some other exposed part. The reason Lasers work so well against most drones is because they are made out of plastic with a melting point of ~300ºc, aircraft grade Aluminium and composites can withstand a lot higher temperatures for a lot longer.
Will they though? The challenge with drones is it’s uneconomical to even use a manpad. With smoke, ER, auto-remote turret light autocannons or HMGs on vehicles, or even just killing the controller remotely those are cheaper options than equipping every infantryman with 10 manpads, or having five thousand SPAAs. Drones for the most part are an economic threat. The “drones” ukraine are sending hundreds of kilometres are basically planes, I think even the cardboard drones won’t be doing that.
But of course, we will see!
THIS is why I enjoy your channel so much 🤠😍
Full disclosure- I am not a vet - but your explanation is spot on.
“Make sure it’s NOT a fair fight” is exactly how we should conduct a confrontation 🤠
It amazes me when people say something is outdated because it was killed in battle. Then how do we still have Infantry?
😂🤣
I don't know what other people say as to why Helicopters outdated, but I can say that there a lot of disadvantages to having helicopters over drones, and few advantages.
@@Slava22222 Drones will probably end up taking some of the jobs of the attack helicopter, but there are plenty of things an attack helicopter can do that a drone cannot. You would end up having to scale a drone up to the size of an attack helicopter, at which point you may as well just have a manned one in most circumstances.
@@ParoXyzmm As I said, drone has a lot of advantages but also has some disadvetages. I don't think it will take much time to improve drones even further(to a level where they can overtake Helicopter). Looks like militaries understand the importance of unmanned aircraft, and more research is directed in improving it.
@@Slava22222
There are certain things that smaller drones simply can't do compared to a larger airframe. So at least having the *option* of a larger airframe is a must.
The problem there is that it is very hard to get the capabilities of a manned aircraft in an unmanned system without just having it be remotely piloted. At which point, for an airframe that large, you may as well just put a person in it.
Helicopters are one of those things where you would have to maintain strict EMCON (behind enemy lines at least), and make decisions about how to act on your orders on your own. Unmanned systems can't do that yet, and with Man in the Loop doctrine, they might not ever.
I *can* see drone wingmen, or loitering munition payloads on attack helicopters though, more likely loitering munitions. In fact I've heard that the newest AH-64 modernization added the capability to direct and communicate with loitering munitions and other drones.
As a reserve officer who only went up to Bn level - this is very illuminating! Thank you!
Just because a platform is absent or poorly used, does not mean it's not useful in the proper role with the proper tactics.
And more specifically, the ability of the helo to go from initial troops in contact to munitions on target is exceptionally fast, Probably among the fastest platforms out there. Fixed wing platforms are great, obviously, but they need time to get briefs, set up their attack runs, clear airspace, etc. Helos can get orient towards, and engage targets very fast.
Conversely, just because there is a theoretical niche that a platform can fill given perfect conditions and support doesn't mean the platform is worth keeping around.
Horse mounted cavalry have continued to put in good work here and there in the modern era. That doesn't mean investing large amounts of money in horse cavalry is a good idea for any modern military.
@@ARCNA442 The B-52 hasn't done much of anything but CAS for 20 years. Just sayin'
In a possible future Pacific conflicts, AH-1Z Vipers are the best options for Island hopping. The pilots are trained and capable of refueling and rearming without support. Also the UH-1Y utility helicopters share over 70% same parts as Vipers. They are a lethal duo.
Do the Jarhead Cobras carry Penguin antiship missiles or anything similar?
@ Idk looked it up says phased out by US Navy. So your point? Yes Huey/Vipers don’t have the large magazines Apaches/Blackhawks have. But they each require their own unique spare parts and a ground crew to reload and fuel up.
Huey/Vipers can survive and stay in the fight on forward deployed supply drops alone. No extra personnel needed.
@@POLOLOUS3 What on earth was that rant about?
What a perfect opperunity to break out my Apache informational book from the 80s.
I Love that this came out while I'm in flight school trying to get selected for 64's - 19D turn helicopter student
Ask them when or if you are receiving Barracuda systems. Miniature cruise missiles with 120 mile range and twice the warhead of the Hellfire.
Deep penetration into the enemy rear (Pun intended), yep something's never change. We practiced and trained the very same battle plan with our AH1's in the 1980's. It was viable than and it's still viable today!...
I am surprised as that isn’t a role they made the AH-1 for.
Great video 👍 so interesting to hear up to date doctrine & usage of the attack helicopter 🙂
The beginning of Operation Iraq Freedom they planned and tried a deep strike mission. One AH-64 shot down and two POW’s captured. The helicopter unit was shot up and turned around failing in their mission. In Baghdad at their was more restoring then two AH-64’s providing over head support and scouting for us lonely tankers, scouts and mortar sections.
The whole brigade got shot up really bad and was combat ineffective for the whole rest of the invasion. The deep strike is not a new concept at all. It's as old as the Apache itself.
@@Fury-161 The deep strike is the Apache's original intended role.
Well said. Basically the usefullness depends on the enemy's capabilities and keeping your assets (mostly) out of the kill zone. No weapon is invulnerable but you want to minimize the danger of losing an asset while maximizing enemy damage. Just today it was reported A-10s scored a success, when they (because of their need to be danger close) were obsolete a decade ago, in many situations. Do we need to fire million dollar missiles when the situation calls for a few bullets?
In the 2003 Iraq War, the 11th AHR (a Corps level unit) and 1/227 Aviation (from 1st Cav Div) attempted a deep attack on Republican Guard mechanized divisions around Karbala, but the Iraqis detected them and shot them up with hundreds of AAA and small arms fire, causing one Apache loss and dozens others damaged. For the rest of the invasion stage, Apaches were mostly used in the close combat attack role supporting ground maneuver units.
Yep. And the books and articles that were written then all described how the "Apache deep battle is dead."
History repeats itself.
@Valorius Deep attack works if proper recon is done, the attack force is not discovered and they synchronize their actions with fixed wing and artillery.
This kind of reminds me the discussions how battleships became obsolete once CVs really took over.
Well, their days as the fleet's backbone and the principal force were gone for sure - but as shore bombardment vessels and with sufficient cover they could still be VERY useful.
they were never obsolete. Even the day they were retired the USMC commandant stated flatly that the USN had nothing (and still has nothing) that could match the battleships for naval gunfire support (NGFS)
@@Valorius The problem nowadays is how do you get that close to shore without getting merced by anti ship missiles. So if you have to support a battleship doing gunfire support with a bunch of other ships and potentially have to shoot down a bunch of missiles, you may as well have just done a tomahawk strike strike in the first place.
@@ParoXyzmm You kill everything that needs killing (ie antiship missiles or heavy guns) before you get that close to shore.
Just like in the olden days.
The other ships cannot do what the battleship does, just as the battleship can not do what they do.
The military term is "combined arms."
@@Valorius Then why not forgo that initial strike on anti ship batteries, and just use those missiles to kill the target you're going after in the first place?
I agree that they could be better for sustained bombardment, but we don't really do that any more. And most ships have 5 inch (127mm) guns that can be used for that purpose, and the modern guns can quite often outrange the older ones due to advances in ballistics and fire control. Not to mention potential added capabilities of the ammunition itself, like radio fuzing, airbursting, etc. Some newer ammunition is guided too, meaning you can be much more accurate.
@@ParoXyzmm how detailed of an answer do you want?
What's interesting is that pretty much every time the Army has tried to execute a deep aviation strike in reality it hasn't worked well. Najaf is the obvious example.
Found you awesome channel brother Love what you do.
Seeing a lot of comments about the Battle of Karbala. Long story short: don't try to dig a tank division out of a city using only helicopters. The lesson is specific to Iraq 2003: the Republican Guard learnt its lesson in 1991 when it dug into the desert and got its arse handed to it (they named the Apache "The Black Death" for a reason). In 2003, they parked up in and around a city full of angry people with rifles. The best counter to an attack helicopter assault is a flak trap, which is what they set up. BUT, hiding your tank divisions in a city is a sign you've already lost, because they don't belong there. The apaches certainly took a good kicking, and performed the CAS role for much of the rest of the conflict, but from a strategic point of view they had influenced the nature and outcome of the war before they even took off.
I'd guess it's possible for the mere possibility of something being there to deploy that can influence how an enemy shapes their own actions.
If something niche can be sent that offers an easy answer, it might be that the very act of preparing for that specifically makes them more vulnerable to other forms of attack.
This was great, thank you for putting this out!
So in general it will require a bunch of close AA defense stuff like grunts with manpads to set up a honeypot (camo net, brigade level amount of radio emisions, some cargo trucks), wait a bit and screw a portion of super costly and rare enemy helo assets.
That would be quite tricky to manage, given that once through the front lines, the helicopters can maneouvre much faster than any defensive asset, and they will potentially have multiple worthwhile targets.
So you will need one of those in every place AHs might want to attack,280km deep in you backlines,with troops,maintenance equipment,decoy equipment good enough to imitate a modern radar array and some expensive AA missiles that you can't just reshuffle into the frontline.And if they just use the AHs as a fleet in being you wasted all those assets.
Did you actually listen to how it was mentioned such a breakthrough in the enermy frontline would be acheived?
A divisions worth or artillery closely coordinated with the apaches could easily suppress your manpad teams long enough for the apaches to breakthrough.
And if you are having to place lots of grunts with manpads in your entire rear, then that is a lot of men and material not on the frontline being used to stop the destruction of your line battalions.
@@jamesrowlands8971 Looking at the lossrate of Ka-52s the MANPADS for sure seem to be faster haha
@@ZeSpektrum you again seem to simply be bad at basic conceptions of things like scale, which was the entire point of the video you're commenting on.
The attack helicopter is not just well suited for deep penetration attacks but also excellent for defending against penetrating attacks. Rapid breakthroughs usually have less robust anti-air setup and the attack helicopter can rapidly respond to them. This is how we've seen them utilized effectively in more recent times during the Ukraine war (although with considerable friendly fire incidents).
A US Special Forces green beret once explained to me, when we were discussing the use of B-52's as CAS assets in Afghanistan that, "Assets are assets, they don't have missions, you just use them for anything they can be good at in any given situation."
Heck even US *tanker* aircraft are credible CAS birds nowadays *in the right situation* (and they are used in that role)
Very well put Sir.
"congresscritter" alright I'm stealing that
Thank you for your video. Even here in Poland we have a heated debate about those Apaches we want to buy. The example of Japan is frequently used by the opponents. You explain everything very clearly so I will save this video for further debates as I suppose it'll finish them up quickly! Best regards
Subtitle: they’re pining for the fjords…
Ha!
This is one of the best explanations I’ve heard. And it sheds light into the reality of things. You don’t have an unlimited number of anti aircraft munitions and you can’t just blanket the whole battlefield with the limited munitions you have.
The tactic that the commander proposed is down right scary. Instead of attacking the frontline where your helicopters could be susceptible to anti aircraft munitions. You surgically enter into the enemy’s back lines and wreak havoc on enemy communications, command, and logistic centers. Further weakening and lengthening their logistics.
I never really thought about using attack helicopters this way. But it makes so much sense. And the enemy could choose to more sparsely disperse their air defenses over the whole country, but that just leaves their frontlines even more vulnerable because now the attack helicopters don’t really have to worry about anti aircraft munitions as much. Truly not a fair fight.😁
Ukrainian drone attacks start with dozens of drones and only on rare occasions do 1 or 2 make it through. How many Apaches are you prepared to lose?
Also, the idea that Low Altitude Air Defenses don't exist behind the front simply isn't true. While it was at one time it isn't any longer. They are the reason that so few drones make it through. While they aren't scattered all over the place, they are concentrated around the very targets an attack helicopter would be hunting.
If an armored concentration is near the front, it has a vast array of Air Defenses covering it. If its being held in some depot well behind the front, the depot itself is covered by a variety of air defenses.
While I agree that the Attack Helicopter should live on, its for an entirely different purpose. No other unit is capable of responding as quickly, with as much firepower and staying power, to an enemy armored breakthrough as an Attack Helicopter. They can respond to a breakthrough within minutes, stop the attack cold and keep it halted until other forces can relieve them.
Attack Helicopters still have their uses but Deep Penetration Attacks aren't one of them, unless you're willing to lose nearly every helicopter sent on such missions.
Yeah with respect to Col Moran here he’s exactly wrong. The only future for rotary wing attack is precisely as a tank destroyer group or anti-vehicle “fire brigade.” The fact that (apparently) the US officer corps believes that air defense doesn’t exist beyond the front is hilarious, and disturbing at the same time. So clueless
@
I’m actually wondering if this is intentional misdirection.
As a faithful member of the US Armed Forces Col. Moran could be spinning the line that he was ordered to. If they can convince Russia that they’re gonna send all their best Attack Helicopters off on suicide missions. Russia won’t be ready for them on their true missions.
Of course, it’s always possible that the upper brass are arrogant enough to believe they can take out all of Russia’s Air Defenses behind the front and carry out such missions. The US hasn’t fought against a near peer adversary since the Korean War. They’ve been fighting against geurilla forces ever since. Vietnam only had significant air defenses around their sensitive sites in the north. They were willing to accept a few losses on every mission from them. They just attacked those defenses first. They might be thinking they can pull off the same thing with Russia but Russia has vastly more anti air capabilities than Vietnam.
They’ve been feeding Ukraine with many of our best weapons for targeting air defenses. Although any attack from US or NATO Forces would involve many more missiles and drones attacking air defenses. They would still be using the same weapons that Russia has been defending against for years now. Russia has had an awful lot of practice.
I’m keeping my mind open on this. While I wouldn’t put it passed them to be trying to mislead Russia, they just might be arrogant enough to think they could pull off such attacks without suffering devastating losses.
But that is the problem drones are good for massed attacks and not much else. Apaches are meant for combined arms warfare and designed for durability and survivability.
Great breakdown of the overall use of this asset vs. a single mission set.
A lot of people are lookinng at the widespread and varied use of drones in Ukraine, and deciding that all sorts of capabilities are dead.
The thing that they are failing to understand, is that a great many of these drone innovations are emergency fixes to cover gaps in the aresenal.
I'm sure that instead of a Cessna jury rigged with components to allow it to be a one way attack object, that the Ukrainian military would prefer to be using a dedicated an infinitely more reliable (and probably effective) system designed for the task.
That and the lesson any halfway competent military will be learning is that they need to up their EW game in order to tharwt one of their future opponents from yeeting platoons out of existence with a $500 DJI ... heck even the Russians and Ukrainians are both constantly deploying more systems to make the other side's drones less effective.
I'm sure, in fact I know due to my studies, that similar arguments appearing during and after WW1 with heavier than air flying machines.
Yes the first time something novel appears everyone decries that everything else is now obsolete.
But once the initial shock wears off and things start getting defeated and countered the panic dies down and the truly revolutionary bits get picked out and applied.
Just my opinion, for what little it is worth.
you can make this into a series.However I do think in the end , helicopters,tanks, apcs, , artillery, drones, jets, planes and even men and pickup/flatbed trucks are just platforms to transports things that go boom within range.
In a discussion that often carries the scent... dare I say, the musk... of idiocy, surface-level understanding and devotion to "hot takes", channels like this are a beacon in the dark.
Superbly put
from past doctrine vids, helos are the tank destroyer branch. and an excellent rear area assault weapon.
there is nothing else that can do it better.
The lower cost option is still anti-tank/he guided rocket and mounted a dozen to a dirtbike.
Honestly, I can only say for four things COULD be considered "dead" by weapon standards. Those being the sword, sling, crossbow, and bow (and various derivatives of it, like a ballista is just a crossbow on 'roids). EVERYTHING ELSE the military still uses. Knives? Yes. Spears? We call it a bayonet. Hammer? Piss off your combat engineer and he'll show you. Axe? Yep, for certain situations, mostly woodcutting, axes are used (not chainsaws, fuel needed for armour). Though I would argue that an infantryman given a sling would find a way to make it work with his hand grenade.
If you stretch words so far as to make a bayonet a spear then a sword is just a knife.
@@mergele1000 A bayonet is a spear when it's a bayonet, on the end of a 1-2 meter long rifle (which becomes the shaft when it runs out of ammo). When a bayonet is not on the rifle, it is just a knife.
@@SnlDrako Handling of spear and bayonet (on a gun) are so different, pulling them together into any category other than "melee weapon" doesn't make sense. At that point an axe is just a knife.
@@mergele1000 Of course, we all know knives have 0.3-2 meter long handles. have crescent shaped blades with the blade on the outer edge, top heavy, and used for woodcutting. Any other pearls of wisdom from the shortbus?
@@SnlDrako short blade on top of a grip. just like a bayonet is a spear because blade on top of a longer grip.
Edit: If you are actually looking at features in a way that makes these distinctions useful you could tell me when the modern military last used a bardiche, a ravens beak or a war chariot.
When a man has a best Dad mug with the Caerbannog bunny atop you have a man to listen to. Great video as always. Thanks.
If fighter jets with hundreds of km of range can’t stop helicopters in armies…then I don’t think much will
Jets have better things to do usually.
The great enemy of the helicopter is a well camoflauged SPAAG, or some private with a stinger.
Solid analysis! Thanks for putting it out for us to see. 🙂
SEE: 2003 "attack on Karbala, 2003 battle during the Iraq War" to see why the Apache's deep attack mission was deemed "dead" during the Invasion of Iraq.
As much as I know that did not go as planned...
@@snaiper5 "Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth." - Mike Tyson
12:16
"whatever would be on the receiving end of this raid would have been absolutely schwacked" why is this line so funny
The fact that the entire Ukrainian 2024 Summer offensive was obliterated almost entirely by Ka-52s proves this to be false.
It certainly does. But internet war junkies never let facts get in the way.
Ehm no. It was blocked by millions of mines and massive amounts of artillery
@@fischersfritz468 "also blocked"
As a former member of the 30th, even though I ranted often about the dirty thirty, I am glad that the armor still belongs in the battle field. Further more as a former member of the FA I am more than glad that the Queen will always need her King of Battle to mold the battlefield.
Russia has proved the attack helicopter is effective as we've seen numerous convoys of Ukrainian and NATO vehicles destroyed by KA-52 helicopters during Ukraine's failed counteroffensive.
A situation where they were serving the role as tank destroyers. The role that was said in the video to be of limited utility.
Meanwhile, the rocket lobbing was serving the role of harassment units. Going in fast, disrupting enemy operations, and leaving. Effective at destroying the enemy? Not really. Effective at fraying the enemies nerves to hell? Absolutely.
Thank you for that, I haven't worried about deep , close and rear for a while.
A fan from Poland here, I guess the main idea behind the Apache buy is to have sort of mobile anti-armor reserve that can be sent anywhere enemy actually managed to penetrate frontline and stop the attack dead in its tracks - literally. Imagine that sort of reserve in Sedan area 1940 to bolster failing infantry being overrun by Guderians panzers?
Also, modern heavy ATGMs can engage enemy as far as 8-10km away, and without need for LOS, thus negating much of the defensive anitair capabilities of the enemy. Russians used their attack helos in that exact way to help stop Ukrainian Zaporozhe offensive in 2023.
Exactly, I think Chieftain has got it backwards here and that the old "tank destroyer" concept where they can mostly operate behind friendly lines is the more practical one for attack helicopters. As you point out, the war in Ukraine has shown deep penetration operations don't work, but acting as mobile artillery is a good use for helicopters.
@@ARCNA442 That's assuming that the opposition are considerate enough to send its battalions forward without supporting assets. One must assume that any attack will be properly co-ordinated and resourced, it's probably going to be a main effort.
Anyway, I'm not speculating, I'm saying in this video how NATO countries use their attack helicopter fleets, my sample size is US, UK and France.
@@ARCNA442 The war in Ukraine has shown no such thing whatsoever.
@@TheChieftainsHatch Correct, you aren't speculating. However, the plans that you are talking about are speculative since no NATO nation has actually employed attack helicopters in a near peer conflict. The best information we have is what's currently going on in Ukraine, and neither side there is using attack helicopters anywhere close to the NATO doctrine you are talking about.
@@ARCNA442 The US employed attack helicopters in Iraq in 1991 against what were at the time very modern air defenses using the latest Soviet Doctrine.
And the same is true for Vietnam as well.
I always enjoy these, thank you.
Greetings from Spain. The APACHE was used successfully in the 1991 Gulf War in a very contested airspace. And the TIGER helicopter was designed for a similar or much worse situation, not to mention what we could call "combined arms wings" which is the way NATO air forces fight, something the Russians do not do and the Ukrainians will be able to do in time thanks to Western aviation.
Calling the Gulf War airspace 'very contested' is really not very accurate - we had air superiority from the get-go and rapidly got to air supremacy. We did lose planes, but nothing like what losses would be against an actual near-peer. There's this pervasive myth, that was encouraged by Bush at the time, that Iraq had a top notch military and they were totally a near-peer except... they never were.
For an actual example of near-peer casualty rates that we could expect you can just look at Ukraine - where despite the Russians holding most of the cards they still have racked up massive airframe losses that are especially bad for helos and ground-pounders. Because when the enemy can field modern-ish MANPADS and also has an air defense network that you can't effectively suppress the value of low'n'slow degrades pretty fast.
Helos aren't dead, but in any P2P conflict their use cases are gonna be pretty marginal as things stand right now. That's just how warfare works - weapons are made, counters are developed, warfare moves in different directions than anticipated when weapons were designed, etc.
EXCELLENT video, sir. While some of the terminology was a bit confusing, the concepts were not - and the validity of the argument was crystal clear. We should not presume that the changing circumstances of tactical use somehow automatically invalidates the usefulness of a weapon / weapon system. As you demonstrated, what may be an appropriate decision for one country may not be appropriate for another.
The war in Ukraine is actually a demonstration that helicopters (not just attack helos) are more survivable than people thought. Both Ukraine and Russia have S-300 and better systems, and they inherited Soviet-era short-range air defense systems that are literally designed to counter NATO's attack helicopters, yet helicopters are still flying. That's because helicopters can navigate around terrain features much more effectively than fixed wing aircraft, allowing them to hide from air defenses, particularly long-range air defenses like the S-300, very well. Also, even against SHORADs, attack helicopters can still get an upper hand in a surprise encounter. I heard that the US Army conducted exercises where AN/TWQ-1 Avengers are pitted against the AH-64s, and the results are in Apache's favor.
Russia has been using ATGM with 10+ km range in order to outrange Ukrainian SHORAD. Attack helicopters caused lots of damage before Ukraine got longer range rockets and started shooting the airfields Russians based their helicopters on.
And most of what helicopters can do there is firing uphill. Russian helicopters are doing things US AT battalion meant to do - over the shoulder support from beyond close AA range. Thing is that you don't need an armored helicopter for that. Rocket truck Blackhawk should do.
Find me any recent footage of an attack helicopter in UA-RU war doing anything besides indirect missile volley in rough direction of an enemy only to run away while firing decoy flares.
@@pin0teres Russians stopping Ua 2023 summer offensive.
They're surviving by not getting anywhere close to S-300s. There were like 1 or 2 deep helicopter raids in the almost three years of hot conflict.
Thank you for sharing these insights. I wonder how essential it is for the helicopters to be crewed? Is it essential for them to be armed? Would it be possible to replace helicopters with drones that select targets for long-range missiles (which are basically a long-range artillery)? Why? Or why not?