Originally Posted By m35ben:
Well played

Originally Posted By centex_SR-15:


2nd times a charm

Originally Posted By CharlieR:
The Russian KA-50 and -52 were designed to be more survivable based on the lessons of Afghanistan.

Stingers would orient ona Hinds tailpipe and blow off the tail boom, and the wreck would fall like a falling leaf.  There is a lot of surface area from the engine to the tail rotor. The Rudsian concept was if you design the helicopter to stay stable without the tail boom, and use contrarotating rotor blades, there is a lot less area to armor, and you can armor up the key areas more.

I'm not saying it worked.  I think modern heat seeking missiles are hitting center mass and it doesn't matter that much, and there isn't enough time to eject.  But that was the idea.

The source below is 25 years old and probably out of date, but the idea behind contrarotating blades was to reduce the area of vulnerable parts.  I would agree with anyone who comes along and says it isnt working.




https://webharvest.gov/peth04/20041019163741/http://fmso.leavenworth.army.mil/red-star/issues/JUL95/JUL95.HTML#THREAT

Originally Posted By CharlieR:




I'm not gonna lie, that video looks off.

It looks like a bunch of guys patrolling in a very safe area, because much of what they are doing just looks off.  It either fake-ish, or they wont be around long.

I dont see any optics, crawling, they are walking around with big heavy rucks in broad daylight with no cover and they are moving in a six man brick with no bounding.  As discussed, they are moving way to fast with way too much and moving way too much noise.

Id say ground your heavy kit and crawl, pull out binos, or wait until dark and infiltrate.

I am skeptical what you see is what is happening; or how these guys have lived this long if this is legit.

Originally Posted By DASJUDEN:


Going to answer these in reverse order because it just flows better.
So a helicopter remains in ground effect(IGE) up to a distance that is roughly equivalent to its rotor diameter, for an Apache it's roughly around 50ft. Without nerding out on it and going through a long ass spiel on aerodynamics the rotor is more efficient in producing lift while IGE and requires less power to remain at a hover. Hovering above that 50ft (or whatever the rotor diameter is) is called hovering out of ground effect (OGE) and requires typically 20% or more power applied to maintain that hover. So if I'm hovering at say 64% torque IGE it would be closer to 84% if I was at an OGE hover. Important to note is that in a helicopter you don't always have 100% torque available due to factors such as high temperature, high density altitude, and high gross weight of the helicopter (the inverse to this is also true.) Sometimes you've got 106% torque available, sometimes you've got 86% torque available. It's all dependent on loadout and environmental conditions.

The ability to hover OGE is desirable because it lets you use the strengths of the helicopter platform (vertical climb and descent) to the fullest extent. If I don't have the power to hover OGE I have to stay above what is called Velocity Safe Dual Engine (VSDE) or if I'm a single engine helicopter Velocity Safe Single Engine(VSSE.) Both VSDE and VSSE are a minimum airspeed that if I don't maintain at or above that speed the helicopter will be in a descent until one of three things happens. Either I get my airspeed back above the VSDE/VSSE, I am back in ground effect, or the helicopter hits the ground. If I can hover OGE I can move a lot lower and a lot slower to get into a position that I can shoot the enemy from. If I'm working as a team of 2 helicopters, one helicopter can come up from behind the trees and hold a stable stationary firing position and cover their wingman while they maneuver forward. We call that bounding overwatch. If I've got a sensor mounted on top of my rotor mast like our fire control radar(FCR) it allows me to just get the FCR above the trees so that way I'm not exposing my whole aircraft to enemy fire and I'm presenting them with a smaller target.

The Hind due to both how it was designed aerodynamically (the wings on it generate a significant amount of lift for the airframe) and the engines it's equipped with is incapable of hovering OGE once it is fully loaded out for combat operations, they just don't have the max torque available. It's inherent in the design of the weapon system as well. The earlier models all had fixed forward guns with limited elevation adjustment rather than turrets, the prevalence of rocket pods used in a saturation fire manner, and the use of wire guided missiles because the aircraft as designed was meant to strafe like a fixed wing and take targets head on. It essentially functions as a very slow fixed wing asset that can utilize unimproved surfaces rather than a helicopter. Hope that answers your questions and hope the acronym explanation style I used was to everyone's liking.

Originally Posted By Jack67:


That’s all well and good in a general audience. I detest inside use of terms-of-art, even in my own fields of specialty.  BUT:  this thread has, for a long time, dealt with many wide and varied, highly technical aspects of policy, weapons, strategy, etc.  The use of acronyms has never been a serious impediment and the tedious spelling out of them would really be equally distracting to a number of others.  Everyone will find a moment they don’t recognize something - and just get used to doing a bit of homework here and there.

If there were a quick and easy way to look up acronyms, like say the internet, handy, you could completely work around this. ;) Google is your friend when you need a quick reference.  If there’s information I want, on a subject I’m not immediately familiar, I don’t mind doing the homework instead of asking others to do it for me.

Originally Posted By thehun06:


Russia doesn't have the competence to fight ... only intimidation and suppression of people within their borders ... Russian government sucks ...

Originally Posted By TheLurker:


Acronyms can be a pain, but I find Google is pretty good for explaining what they mean if I really need to know, and can't work it out from the context of the discussion.

Originally Posted By Prime:

Outstanding.