• supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz
    8·
    21 hours ago

    I am still very strongly of the mind that the best platform to hunt UAVs are attack and light utility helicopters, but ooooofff.

    I mean at a minimum, this means Russia’s helicopter doctrine is NOT effectively keeping pace with the war. There are two levels of failure here.

    1. There were at least two drones within visual range of the helicopter, the drone that did the attack and the drone that observed and confirmed the result. The question in a modern combined arms context is, where were the recon drones supporting the helicopter and why didn’t they spot the Ukrainian drones? Were the drone operators in the area even capable of talking to the helicopter to warn them? Helicopters are either obsolete or they are highly valuable mobile platforms for controlling networks of unmanned vehicles and fighters, there is no inbetween, there is zero room for outdated doctrine here. Helicopters must be part of a networked force in conversation or they must not be anywhere near the frontline.

    2. Russia doesn’t have established tactics for fighting and countering ‘kamikaze’ fixed wing/high speed unmanned drones from a helicopter, so even if the crew had detected the Mi-8 did they have training to fall back on? Again this will either become a fundamental capability and utility of any attack, recon or medium lift utility helicopter or those helicopters will be obsolete categorically. One obvious solution are missiles, but attack helicopters with chaingun turrets using digitally assisted targetting seem quite capable of hitting even very high speed kamikaze drones to me and it is mystifying to me why that isn’t more widely recognized. Turret mounts for direct fire anti-drone weapons are going to become necessary for all non-heavy lift helicopters but also the flipside of that will become helicopters gain another dimension of force projection. A helicopter can mount a serious amount of anti-drone weaponry, but it can also manuever to fire them in the safest way possible for civilians and friendly troops in a way almost no other platform can.

    The world must give Ukraine more drone hunting helicopters! Also I sure hope the US military is collaborating with Ukraine on the development of helicopter launched drones for defensive, offensive and reconnaisance purposes.