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RE: Helicopters in FPC - 1/5/2015 9:00:01 PM

IronMikeGolf

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quote:

ORIGINAL: MaxDamage

You mean the sheer height of the helicopter with dual rotors? But if you do the longbow-style setup for the helo's sensors on top of the rotors thats not even a disadvantage anymore.

I don't think that's quite the same. The sensor dome look to rise about half the distance that there is between the two rotors on the KA-52. And I expect the radar signature of the upper rotor is quite a bit more than that of the Apache sensor dome and mast.

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Post #: 121

RE: Helicopters in FPC - 1/5/2015 11:27:13 PM

Mad Russian

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quote:

ORIGINAL: MaxDamage

You mean the sheer height of the helicopter with dual rotors? But if you do the longbow-style setup for the helo's sensors on top of the rotors thats not even a disadvantage anymore.

I dunno from what ive heard ka 50 can strafe sideways 90-100 kmh while maintaining its nose pointed at one spot, can pretty much rotate 360 degrees while flying at one direction at pretty high speeds and generally do big stunts. Also, from what i heard ka29 is a much more stable firing platform when compared to hind and also i heard that mi8 in afghanistan had trouble with flying in mountaineous sparse air while kamovs would have little trouble.

Generally, dual rotor seems to give improved flight characteristics to a helicopter i think this includes things like climb rate and max altitude. All that could give certain advantages in both air to air and air to ground and just transport role.

A sensor mast is nothing like a dual rotor system. The sensor mast actually allows the Apache to stay below LOS when it does some of it's mission. The KA-52 on the other hand would have to come way up with those double rotors. But that's just my impression. We have guys on here that will know and tell us for sure.

What I'm also thinking is that the double rotor will give a much larger aircraft signature for detection.

Good Hunting.

MR

< Message edited by Mad Russian -- 1/6/2015 12:32:43 AM >

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Post #: 122

RE: Helicopters in FPC - 1/10/2015 3:10:40 AM

ivanov

Posts: 1107
Joined: 6/14/2013
From: European Union
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Hello everyone,

The Ukrainians have recently lost 9 modified Mi-24's over Donbas. All of those loses were caused by the MANPADS. No doubt that Donbas "insurgents" are well equipped force, but you cannot say that they are a regular army and they don't posses a multi layered AD system. It is often said that the Soviets lost the air superiority over Afghanistan when the Stingers were delivered to the Mujahideen. So were the NATO forces of late 80's really worse equipped in terms of the MANPADS, than the army of illiterate Afghan Pashtuns? From the other hand, better armored and more sophisticated Apaches would also suffer very high loses against a formidable Soviet AD. Just think of the first Gulf War - only the Iraqi AD was able to cause any measurable loses to the coalition forces. In the late 80's most of the air power assets were still using a conventional, "dumb" munitions, so their loses on both sides would be horrendous. In the modern era only a highly sophisticated multi role combat aircraft, equipped with the standoff weapons, may have any chance to survive against modern AD systems. As to the helicopters - they still can be useful in some asymmetric conflicts, but in a full scale war of two advanced armies they would be a sitting ducks.

I can imagine, that in a hypothetical clash between NATO and WP, most of the helicopters on both sides would be destroyed during the opening days of the war and it would be all up to the armored vehicles and the artillery. So the general "fell" of the game would be better if they appear only occasionaly.

Ps. I'm still getting into the game but I think it would be great if you could create some scenarios that would include other WP nations and some secondary fronts. For example in reality the Polish army was tasked with the invasion of Denmark and was supposed to face a German-Danish corps. It would be fun to play it if you ask me:)

< Message edited by katukov -- 1/10/2015 4:15:31 AM >

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Post #: 123

RE: Helicopters in FPC - 1/10/2015 6:36:29 AM

Tophat1815

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Drop some arty on the vaunted AD system and lets see how well it performs.

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Post #: 124

RE: Helicopters in FPC - 1/10/2015 2:21:44 PM

Mad Russian

Posts: 13256
Joined: 3/16/2008
From: Texas
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quote:

ORIGINAL: katukov

Hello everyone,

The Ukrainians have recently lost 9 modified Mi-24's over Donbas. All of those loses were caused by the MANPADS. No doubt that Donbas "insurgents" are well equipped force, but you cannot say that they are a regular army and they don't posses a multi layered AD system. It is often said that the Soviets lost the air superiority over Afghanistan when the Stingers were delivered to the Mujahideen. So were the NATO forces of late 80's really worse equipped in terms of the MANPADS, than the army of illiterate Afghan Pashtuns? From the other hand, better armored and more sophisticated Apaches would also suffer very high loses against a formidable Soviet AD. Just think of the first Gulf War - only the Iraqi AD was able to cause any measurable loses to the coalition forces. In the late 80's most of the air power assets were still using a conventional, "dumb" munitions, so their loses on both sides would be horrendous. In the modern era only a highly sophisticated multi role combat aircraft, equipped with the standoff weapons, may have any chance to survive against modern AD systems. As to the helicopters - they still can be useful in some asymmetric conflicts, but in a full scale war of two advanced armies they would be a sitting ducks.

In my opinion, and what NATO ADA was based on was, yes. NATO would have been worse off than the Pashtuns. Where do you suppose all those stingers came from? They came from stocks in the US first, then they came from stocks in Europe. Those stocks in Europe would reduce the US Army ability to have them for the time period that Red Storm covers.

We did extensive research on the Arab Israeli wars, the Falklands and the Gulf Wars to see how well ADA did and for the most part it far under delivered what had been advertised. The British Blowpipe in particular was in a single word, worthless. There were others. All aspects of the game were researched against any and all actual combat situations we could find results from and then extrapolated into the game from there. I think the Capn did a great job of meshing everything together.

quote:

I can imagine, that in a hypothetical clash between NATO and WP, most of the helicopters on both sides would be destroyed during the opening days of the war and it would be all up to the armored vehicles and the artillery. So the general "fell" of the game would be better if they appear only occasionally.

Red Storm only covers the first few days of the war. So we are good with your assessment.

quote:

Ps. I'm still getting into the game but I think it would be great if you could create some scenarios that would include other WP nations and some secondary fronts. For example in reality the Polish army was tasked with the invasion of Denmark and was supposed to face a German-Danish corps. It would be fun to play it if you ask me:)

The other Warsaw Pact Nations and other fronts are coming. The next game in the series is Southern Storm with more NATO and WP nations and fighting in the south of Germany. Your wish is our command.

Good Hunting.

MR

< Message edited by Mad Russian -- 1/10/2015 3:25:35 PM >

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Post #: 125

RE: Helicopters in FPC - 1/10/2015 3:52:18 PM

MTTODD

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I find the argument with the low number of Stingers difficult to believe.

Surely not all stocks of Stingers were sent to Afghanistan ?

And given that a time of crisis would precede any major war, would not the US of diverted all Stingers to Europe.

I think the lack of Stingers makes the Soviet helicopters more potent than they would of been.

(in reply to Mad Russian)

Post #: 126

RE: Helicopters in FPC - 1/10/2015 5:51:32 PM

ivanov

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Mad Russian

The other Warsaw Pact Nations and other fronts are coming. The next game in the series is Southern Storm with more NATO and WP nations and fighting in the south of Germany. Your wish is our command.

That's great Sir! I am going to buy all future expansions. This game is what I was waiting, for probably since mid 90-ties... Some other fictional scenarios would also work with the system: hypothetical War in Korea 2.0, China vs. Taiwan or Russian Invasion of the Baltics...

As to the Stinger, it's hard for me to believe that NATO command was so careless, that by sending them to Afghanistan, it decisively weakened the AD capability of the ground troops. The potential ETO was a top priority for the Alliance planners. According to wiki, around 500 missiles and 250 launcher were sent to Afghanistan, where they had about 80% kill ratio. Over 13000 missiles were delivered to US Army, so I seriously doubt, that it's SHORAD capacity was seriously affected. You also have consider the fact, that Mi-24 has proven to be very vulnerable and not very effective, even against not very advanced enemy, equipped with heavy machine guns and RPG's ( Chechenya, Syria etc ).

Another question - is there a possibility of a helo vs. helo air combat in the game? One of the Cobra vets few pages back, was mentioning that he was expecting to face Mi-24's in the air combat. If NATO was aiming to achieve the air superiority, then obviously the helos would be mostly engaged by other helos, not by fixed wing aircraft.

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Post #: 127

RE: Helicopters in FPC - 1/10/2015 7:38:10 PM

Sabre21

Posts: 8231
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From: on a mountain in Idaho
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quote:

ORIGINAL: MaxDamage

I just dont get it why the soviets have lower morale. Soviet/russian morale was high in every 20 century war. If you heard about Stalingrad or Kursk. I cant find an explanation for this.

I was stationed in the former west Germany from Jan 83 to Dec 85 and then again from July 88 to Jun 90. From my experiences working with the various Nato allies, the US, Brit and German morale was almost always very high. Even after extended times in the field, morale was never an issue.

As for the Soviets, I would say that in the early 80's it was pretty good, but between 88 and 90 it had gone down quite a bit. I encountered Soviet troops on a few occasions, and those border and Spetnaz units were always very professional and no doubt highly motivated. As for the regular line units though that was a different story.

With 25% new conscript replacements every 6 months, these units were constantly having to retrain to maintain even basic skills. They didn't have a professional NCO corps as western forces do, so these duties were left to officers. Maintenance and morale was a big problem in the late 80's. There were plenty of reasons for this though, the war in Afghanistan was coming to a close and not going their way, the Soviet Union was collapsing from within and there were plenty of soldiers not getting paid for up to 6 months..yea...morale was going down the toilet then.

Now, let's remove those negative factors and say money and effort was put into building up the force in preparation of a war with the west, then I would say morale would have been good as would their maintenance.

Another comment to add is that the Ka-50 wasn't in being in the late 80's early 90's...nor was the Longbow Apache. Both were very early prototypes. As for helicopter losses, no doubt there would be many, especially amongst my cobra brethren since we operated right up on the FLOT (air cavalry). The apaches though could hang back 5 to 8 kilometers and fire hellfires all day long without even seeing the target. Later versions of the hellfire missile extended that to 12 k's.

As for the dual rotor creating more air disturbance, that's an interesting one. I know the heavier the helicopter the more powerful the rotor system must be thus creating more disturbance. But I'm not sure if the KA 50 would create more than a comparable sized single rotor helicopter. This has to be a pretty noisy helicopter though, because where you get most of the noise is where the wind from the main rotor interacts with the tail rotor on most helicopters. With this one, like a Chinook, you have 2 large rotors putting out a lot of air disturbance interacting with each other. That equates to a heck of a lot of noise.

The best rotor system for aerobatic maneuvering is a fully rigid system. The old huey and cobra had a semi-rigid system which could only use 2 blades. Then you have an articulated system which most helicopters use. Finally you have the fully rigid which up until the advent of strong composites were restricted to light helicopters like the Hughes 500 and Bo-105 types. There is a lot of stress put on a fully rigid system and that increases dramatically as the weight of the aircraft goes up. The Comanche was the first in it's weight class to use a fully rigid system due to the all composite rotor blades. The program was shut down in 04, but had the Soviet Union still existed, I have no doubt it would be in operation today.

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Post #: 128

RE: Helicopters in FPC - 1/10/2015 8:15:16 PM

Mad Russian

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quote:

ORIGINAL: MTTODD

I find the argument with the low number of Stingers difficult to believe.

Surely not all stocks of Stingers were sent to Afghanistan ?

And given that a time of crisis would precede any major war, would not the US of diverted all Stingers to Europe.

I think the lack of Stingers makes the Soviet helicopters more potent than they would of been.

Just like all the equipment and parts in the US Army wasn't sent to Vietnam during the war?

Where do you think that stingers would be better served than shooting down Soviet helicopters in Afghanistan where they were flying? The US isn't some kind of unlimited supply warehouse. The Army buys so many of each type of equipment. During peacetime they figure a usage rate loss for training. But when we supply other nations with our own ready arms that does and has historically depleted our in supply stock for our own troops.

I fully agree with you. NATO's lack of a credible air defense makes the Hinds more powerful than what they would normally be.

Good Hunting.

MR

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Post #: 129

RE: Helicopters in FPC - 1/10/2015 8:21:01 PM

Mad Russian

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quote:

ORIGINAL: katukov

That's great Sir! I am going to buy all future expansions. This game is what I was waiting, for probably since mid 90-ties... Some other fictional scenarios would also work with the system: hypothetical War in Korea 2.0, China vs. Taiwan or Russian Invasion of the Baltics...

The system was designed to model combats from 1936 to near future. So if it happened from WW2 through today or it could have happened from WW2 through today this system should be able to handle it and we have those conflicts somewhere on our list of places to take the series.

quote:

As to the Stinger, it's hard for me to believe that NATO command was so careless, that by sending them to Afghanistan, it decisively weakened the AD capability of the ground troops. The potential ETO was a top priority for the Alliance planners. According to wiki, around 500 missiles and 250 launcher were sent to Afghanistan, where they had about 80% kill ratio. Over 13000 missiles were delivered to US Army, so I seriously doubt, that it's SHORAD capacity was seriously affected. You also have consider the fact, that Mi-24 has proven to be very vulnerable and not very effective, even against not very advanced enemy, equipped with heavy machine guns and RPG's ( Chechenya, Syria etc ).

The US wasn't really worried about being short when the stringers were already shooting down Soviet helicopters in other parts of the world. It would have only been a problem if there had been two conflicts at or near the same time. Which is what Red Storm depicts. If another time period had been chosen the AD would have been different. It was part of my research and my choice to reduce stinger usage for the US Army for this time period.

quote:

Another question - is there a possibility of a helo vs. helo air combat in the game? One of the Cobra vets few pages back, was mentioning that he was expecting to face Mi-24's in the air combat. If NATO was aiming to achieve the air superiority, then obviously the helos would be mostly engaged by other helos, not by fixed wing aircraft.

Yes, helicopter will fight and kill each other in FPC.

Good Hunting.

MR

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Post #: 130

RE: Helicopters in FPC - 1/10/2015 9:44:03 PM

MTTODD

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In your research what did you find out on the following:

1)How many Stingers were sent to Afghanistan ?

2)How many Stingers were in US inventory at the time ?

Following article states the number sent was probably between 1000 & 2500. Which is a lot less than the 13000 delivered to the US army.

Article interestingly also questions the effective of the Stinger missile.

http://europauniversitypress.co.uk/auth_article416.html

Many thanks.

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Post #: 131

RE: Helicopters in FPC - 1/10/2015 9:59:33 PM

Lowlaner2012

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I am playing a pbem at the moment, I just thought I would post a screenshot to show that even the lowly Vulcan has at least got some teeth, I have 2 Vulcan units that have killed 10 hinds between them, yes most of the Vulcans were wiped out in the process, but hey you cant win them all

Attachment (1)

< Message edited by highlandcharge -- 1/10/2015 11:10:02 PM >

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Post #: 132

RE: Helicopters in FPC - 1/10/2015 10:05:10 PM

Lowlaner2012

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And here is the other unit

Attachment (1)

< Message edited by highlandcharge -- 1/11/2015 12:05:36 AM >

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RE: Helicopters in FPC - 1/10/2015 11:37:57 PM

IronMikeGolf

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One of things we really need, as players, is an LOS check/overlay for AD units the can show the engagement envelope vs air targets. That and the ability to put radar equipped unit into EMCON.

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Post #: 134

RE: Helicopters in FPC - 3/27/2015 4:36:27 AM

batteran

Posts: 53
Joined: 6/18/2012
From: New Caledonia
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Interressing thread!

I learn somewhere that Helo can shoot a AT missile from behind a hill in the general direction of the targets, wait for the missile to travel to over top of the ennemies positions, pop just a few seconds for precise landing of the missile by sight acquisition, and go back to cover.

They don't need to have the target in sigth all the time of missile travel.

It's a standard attack procedure that let the helo vulnerable only a few seconds. (That works very well in attack helos simulations games ^^ Commanche Vs Hokum & Apache Vs Havok in that case ^^)

This sort of attack really make helos a very dangerous threat for tanks or other targets. In fact, other targets include ennemies SAM and AD ^^ If you see the Helos pop at top of hill it's too late for you, the missile will land in less than 2 seconds. And they will be back behind the hill way before the stinger your teammate shoot at them even came close to them.

It's a procedure fitted for guided missiles fired at medium-long ranges, that of course don't works for roquets pods. Or if the helo don't know your position ^^

< Message edited by batteran -- 3/27/2015 6:45:48 AM >

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Post #: 135

RE: Helicopters in FPC - 3/27/2015 5:14:45 AM

batteran

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Theorically, assaulting a well defended ennemies position that consist of SAM, AD, Tanks and infantery is possible with only helos and some covers.

First: you have to know the ennemy positions ^^ Let's pretends a scout or a deliberate peeping have done that.
Second, you approch behind the hills/covers, and "pop" your ATGM on the SAM and AD units like the procedure depicted on previous post. Only one at a time, and change your position between every shoot.

Third: Once you have depleted your ATGM/killed all AD capable units, just switch to roquets pods / autocanons and go for the fest ^^

OK, it's the "perfect plan" scenario, I admit it ^^

< Message edited by batteran -- 3/27/2015 7:26:45 AM >

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Post #: 136

RE: Helicopters in FPC - 3/27/2015 12:37:48 PM

Flef

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quote:

ORIGINAL: batteran

Interressing thread!

I learn somewhere that Helo can shoot a AT missile from behind a hill in the general direction of the targets, wait for the missile to travel to over top of the ennemies positions, pop just a few seconds for precise landing of the missile by sight acquisition, and go back to cover.

They don't need to have the target in sigth all the time of missile travel.

It's a standard attack procedure that let the helo vulnerable only a few seconds. (That works very well in attack helos simulations games ^^ Commanche Vs Hokum & Apache Vs Havok in that case ^^)

This sort of attack really make helos a very dangerous threat for tanks or other targets. In fact, other targets include ennemies SAM and AD ^^ If you see the Helos pop at top of hill it's too late for you, the missile will land in less than 2 seconds. And they will be back behind the hill way before the stinger your teammate shoot at them even came close to them.

It's a procedure fitted for guided missiles fired at medium-long ranges, that of course don't works for roquets pods. Or if the helo don't know your position ^^

That's the LOAL firing mode of the hellfires. It is very fine on the paper, in practice there is some drawbacks. You don't even need to get the launcher poping from behind the reverse slope with a combat observation lasing team(COLT).

Basicaly it works with a delayed laser lock. Meaning in fact the target designator have a few seconds to acquire the target after launch.
The first drawback is when the target designator is late on the target designation . the missile won't have its target and will start to do some fancy acrobatics.

In addition getting a clean enough lock is not this easy. Smokes can pop, there is backscatter on the laser signals and by overall the beam divergence may cause your missile to not be able to lock on target.

Last the cloud ceiling can simply prevent your missile to see the dot. Even in the lowest altitude mode, the missile will climb at 1200m over the launcher altitude. If it goes into cloud you lost it.

It means that even if a target is visible by a target designator at 7000m, it does not mean the target can be hit.

Another thing to know about this missile is that before the AGM114K, the missile are not able to reacquire a lock.

So technically it means you can't really attack an entrenched position and intend to destroy it because as it will be drawn into smoke and the adverse commander will call for help. You may cause some destruction but that's all. Don't forget an entrenched positon is a dispositive laying on several kilometers. It'll be hard to acquire all targets and a good commander always keep in mind that the opponent is always able to find a way to break your genital parts.

However with a good coordination with a COLT you may be able to set up ambushes against moving columns and that's the main point of using helicopters :D.

< Message edited by Flef -- 3/27/2015 1:44:32 PM >

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Post #: 137