Play Conflict of Nations for FREE on PC, iOS or Android: 💥con.onelink.me/kZW6/MAH001 Receive a Unique Starter Pack, available only for the next 30 days! *Contrary to my show notes I forgot to mention Soviet rotary-wing operations in Afghanistan. Big picture doesn't change but have a quote here:* "[Soviet] Counterinsurgency [CI] forces conducted a variety of ground and heliborne (desant) operations, usually platoon to company size […]. CI forces were normally inserted by helicopter into numerous positions from which they could support the advance of motorised rifle [MR] units, preempt ambushes, and occupy blocking positions [blokirovaniye] […]. They also carried out large and small raids […] supported by ground-attack fixed-wing aircraft and attack helicopters." McMichael, Scott (2002) “The Soviet Afghan War”, in Higham, Robin and Frederick W. Kagan, The Military History of the Soviet Union, Palgrave, p. 268.
The most surprising thing about the Russo-Ukrainian conflict so far is that general public seems to have completely forgotten that war involves casualties.
@@WALTERBROADDUS I think the take away is that the public in the west became very used to the low intensity, precise, counter terror operations in the Middle East. Or the overwhelming advantage that the west had in the Gulf Wars. That western public’s came to expect war to continue being like the past two or three decades, where western militaries might suffer less than a few hundred casualties annually. Now we sit on the sidelines of a near peer war and it is eye opening to see the expense involved both in lives and riches.
@@johnkole953 I think it's more folks in the West would not throw away an entire generation on this operation. Both sides have degenerated into attrition Warfare. Also Western people have a political system that would have removed leadership by now.
Ask not what you can do to the helicopter, but what the helicopter can do to you. Even if it's not invincible, it still does things no other platform can do quite as well
. . . that then amounts to 1 'choppah' per 1500 km² in total and finally to 1 actively usable 'choppah' per 10000 km² for all the many assigned tasks . . .
My memory of US army helicopters is that when the air force split off from the army in 1947, they wanted to control all aviation assets, including aircraft carriers and ground support. The navy stopped their part of it, and the army managed to retain support of very small aircraft and helicopters, because all the air force really wanted was bombers and fighters. Thus one reason the army turned to helicopters so much during the Korean War (1950-3) and Vietnam War (1965-1972) was because it was all they were allowed to have, and to everybody's surprise, helicopters turned out to be pretty darned useful, especially once they started using turbine power instead of air-cooled radials left over from WW II. How much of this is true, in the practical sense? If the army had kept ground support planes and small transports, would helicopter usage have been slower? And how much of other countries' helicopter usage was influenced by the US army's success with the Huey and other early turbine helicopters?
"it was all they were allowed to have" That isn't really true. Because the Army was/is able to get fixed wing aircraft whenever there was a valid mission requirement for it. What the Nat. Sec. Act of 47 was designed to prevent was the creation of duplicate and redundant air forces in the DoD. "to everybody's surprise" To no ones surprise. The utility of helicopters was very evident and development of them is almost as old as airplanes.
Spot on. Remember when the Army fought to get the C-27 fleet? The USAF was not supporting them so the Army wanted them. Then the USAF fought them tooth and nail and the Army said ok, support us then. And then as the USAF could, they could they dumped them. We don't want them and you can't have them.
Is there a reason why Stingers weren’t doing the trick at that time? Edit: guys thank you for the answers but this was literally explained dozens of times a full month ago, you don't need to keep replying
@@AlexLee-dc2vb Maybe they were not in range to use manpads but another thing to consider is that the Ka-52 fires long range anti-tank guided missiles so I’m sure the alligators were sitting behind the frontline
@@AlexLee-dc2vb range was the reason. The russian helicopters flew low above the ground and shot their AT missiles at a range of 10-12 km. Ukraine had no answer to that. But the USA gave Ukraine an answer to the helicopters after the ukrainian offensive had already failed. The answer were ATACMS. They did destroy many russian helicopters on the ground.
I think someone said it already but the ukes were short of longer range interceptors and the Russians were able to stand off beyond the range of manpads. As the ukes have shown, it’s much easier to dictate the terms of the engagement when you are defending.
There was a growing concern during the 1980s that in the event of a war between the Warsaw Pact and NATO that the Soviets would be able to land a very large force of troops support by attack helicopter behind NATO lines so that NATO forces would be caught in a pincer movement between the two. One proposal put forward was for a very agile aircraft which would fly at very low level which would hunt down these helicopters. It would be of canard configuration to improve agility with a turboprop engine mounted at the rear and possibly carrying the M61 Vulcan rotary cannon and a number of air to air missiles. The project was halted when the Soviet Union collapsed.
If I remember correctly that project was somewhat inspiration for polish small ground support aircraft PZL - 230 Skorpion en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PZL-230_Skorpion
@@billywoods3337 That was it. Thanks I was trying to remember that. Well at least the missile made it to service. It would have made a great ground attack aircraft in Afghanistan instead of the A-10. Nothing against the A-10 but it was like using a Rolls Royce for pizza delivery
There were various takes at the anti-helicopter role... For example the AlphaJet and Hawk weren't just trainers, in wartime one of their roles would have been hunting helicopters with their gun pods and Sidewinders. Arguably the MBB Lampyridae might have covered that nice as well, as a stealth fighter it would have been far less vulnerable over the FEBA, and it was a bit small for an air superiority fighter.
A crucial piece of Soviet development of helicopters is actually more *civil* than *military* (although there were strong, related military drivers). Basically, Siberia and the southwestern USSR had (and still have, now under the Russian Federation) very poor transportation infrastructure in most locations. The need for vertical lift heavy transport and STOL transport were critical to being able to exploit the natural resources of these regions. Likewise, the *defense* of these regions heavily drove towards a robust helicopter and STOL capacity. This in turn made incorporating helicopters heavily into defense doctrine *in general* a common sense driver - might as well make a virtue of a requirement, so as to "dual use" the capacity you were going to have to develop and buy anyway - since you need the helos and short field cargo lift to handle stuff in remote regions, it's only logical to incorporate those capabilities into your war plans for Western Europe. Russia inherited a military shaped by Soviet requirements, which is entirely predictable that they'd lean in on areas that outside factors *forced* their Soviet predecessors to develop heavily.
Yep. Resources (to include farmland) in the vast interior of Russia east of the Urals is extremely dispersed such that it does not make economic sense to have significant roadways that needs to be maintained regularly. This is especially true in the permafrost regions that turns into a muddy marsh in the summer. It barely warrants rail lines. However, there are pockets of natural resource wealth. The helicopter is perfect as a means of transport from these pockets to the rail lines when the roadways (which are poor in the best of times) are not passable.
I've worked on mine sites in Siberia. Helicopters are generally too expensive. Transport is by Truck during winter using frozen over rivers and lakes. In summer or the thaw nothing gets in or out that way and STOL is used. The Helicopter is useful for establishing the camp.
Should have mentioned that mass air mobility forces the enemy to take a more spread out defensive posture. You have to be ready for attacks basically anywhere, and maintain many small reaction units all over. The threat alone is valuable.
Important context to keep in mind is this is a peer to peer war, or LSCO whichever buzzword you want to use. But it’s a very different war from the COIN operations we’re accustomed to, and something NATO planners need to look closely at as we inch closer and closer to a possible hot war in the Indo-Pacific. In Vietnam, the U.S. alone lost 5607 helicopters, and 10,000 aircraft total. We lost 134 in Afghanistan. The VKS’ performance in this war has been underwhelming, however, their losses are far from crippling. And it’s quite likely annual Russian aircraft production is able to keep pace with its current loss rate, which has dramatically decreased since the very kinetic opening days of the war.
Well, that's not entirely true. Not only because Russian aircraft production since the fall of the Soviet Union was not very high to begin with and a lot of production capacity was lost. But also because Russian Air Force is rather untypical in the fact that they rely a lot on planes that are no longer in production or produced in very low numbers. So lot of these losses in Ukraine are very hard or even impossible to replace, because that manufacturing capacity simply doesn't exist anymore. And also it is always not about absolute numbers, but what they mean for the force. Yes, for example over 3.000 Hueys were lost in Vietnam, but more than 16.000 were built and at the end of the war despite the losses US had more Hueys that they had a need for. Which btw was one of the reason for those high numbers of losses, that especially at the end they were considered a surplus, not something that needs to be repaired if it is too much fuss. On the other hand, out of prewar Russian Kamov Ka-52 fleet, probably something around 60 % of prewar capacity has been already lost and such rate of attrition is pretty much crippling for any force.
Do note that the VKS is using its most modern forces, while it is quite large, the lost aircraft are pretty much solely the most modern units they have. If we take their pre-war domestic and export deliveries as a baseline, and add say, 40% to that to account for crash production cycles, they have lost about 9-10 years of modern strike helicopter production (ka52, mi28, mi35), and about 5-6 of modern strike/multirole plane (su34). They also lost around 30 CAS (SU25), that's around 4 years for modernization, they no longer produce that airframe. No, they are not keeping up with the losses, but again, they are something they can rebuild. Then again, the announced deliveries of the f35 for 2024/2025 are larger than the entirety of modern Russian fixed wing air force (su35, su34, modernized mig31, mig35). Just to compare the scale we are talking about.
if you mentioned Market Garden - one problem was that you can't evaquate the ground forces, it's one way ticket for gliders and patatroops. with helicopter you can do it in relativly ease.
The reason isn't so much due to doctrine as much as war necessity. Russia clearly is aware of the risks of operating helicopters in contested airspace but needs the utility provided by highly mobile firepower. Slow moving or static ground based artillery is now at least as vulnerable near the front lines because of the transparency provided by drones and satellites. Of course a MANPADS can take down a helicopter but a drone can take out a piece of ground equipment too. Russia has a high tolerance for risk and an aggressive war objective, this then leads to using everything available that can provide military utility.
People forgot it a war , you lost your equipment, during Vietnam war the american lost thousands of helicopter , doesn't mean helicopter are shit , it just proved them useful assets in a war
@@michaelmclaughlin4889 If you're going to call it that you need to put it in quotation marks since it's not a counteroffensive, just an offensive. Just because some propagandist thought counteroffensive sounded better doesn't actually make it so.
@@skitidet4302 No. The other person was right and you are incorrect. If someone invades your home and starts ethnically cleansing your family, fighting back counts as a 'counteroffensive'. 'Offensive' moreso describes russia's attempted invasion of Kyiv, at the beginning of russıa's failed attempt at quickly conquering Ukraine.
@@obsidianjane4413 yeah it's very weird, if the US where losing 15% of their helikopters full scale war against a near 🍐 , and they are still are still a positive I'd think it'd be stupid to say that still using them is stupid.
If you're choosing to focus specifically on the why of *one* party doing or using something, you're not automatically assuming nobody else is; it means you're choosing to limit what to talk about so it doesn't bloat beyond your current focus.
The Russians have a branch for airmobile/air assault units and paratroopers. It's not a surprise that they will use helicopters a lot. The Deep Battle concept was developed by the Soviets as a response to the problems of WW1 that the Russian Empire faced. Paratroopers were part of the deep battle doctrine. Thing is that during WW2 the first helicopters were used by the US. The Soviets found out about this and they developed their own helicopters because they thought airmobile/air assault units could be just as useful as paratroopers and maybe that airmobile units could be used when paratroopers can't. The Russians got the Soviet equipment, Soviet military thinking and a whole lot of land. Helicopters have their uses in hilly and mountainous areas.
Yeah, choppers are awesome. Drones are good in these frozen frontline condition, however when the frontline breaks that heavy firepower and airlifting capability will pay dividents.
except...it won't. everything that everyone believes about warfare is now bullshit in the age of the FPV. FPVs can stall ANY breakthrough. FFS look at the present major war.
I haven't seen anyone do a realistic analysis on drones against helicopters. The thing is, helicopters are at their most vulnerable in takeoff and landing, ie. the moment they need to drop troops on the target area and get the copters back in air again. Defenders don't want to bombard their own airfield with heavy artillery, SAMs are rare and expensive, you can't tie down troops to defend every possible target in the potential air assault range. What you can do is set up drone storage near the important strategic targets. As soon as you can predict reliably what the target is going to be, send up Lancets and quadcopters. Casualties taken in the first minute of the air assault really sap the attackers strength and decrease their chances of taking and holding their target. It doesn't matter whether it's VDV, their support weapons & ammunition or the copters themselves that get taken out, it's all bad. Jamming that deep in enemy territory is hard and there is no reliable kinetic defense against drones. And this is of course only with the drones we currently have. It doesn't take much to design a barrage balloon-style suicide drone swarm with enough explosives to take copters in descent down. It's just software for existing stuff. If a helo falls as little as 10-15 meters during landing attempt everyone inside is incapacitated for the duration. Assaulting a target becomes much harder if you can't have fire support from gunships or even land directly at the target area.
Remember it was 50 years between the bi-plane and the F-15. Drone technology is going to increase at an even faster rate as there are already armed drones.
I remember reading Frank Chadwick’s designer notes. Rotor is to track as track is to foot. The lesson of Arnhem was that airborne operations had to be within range of supporting forces, especially artillery. GSFG was well provided. As with dedicated CAS aircraft there is another advantage to helicopters - proximity to the front line, and the ability to generate sorties. If a helicopter is being maintained and resupplied minutes behind the front line then it can get there quicker.
Thinking about it while Russia has only 50.000 confirmed casualities in ukraine ( around same as vietnam, my source is bbc mediazona. ) Russia has only lost what 500 aircraft? ( including fixed wing & helicopters ) and for a nation with such a well developed and advanced anti air system using s300s and patriot systems, I argue thats pretty good. Also ka50s and ka52s are amazing with real survival systems, such as a ejection seat which I think all western helicopters need.
Currently reading Red Storm Rising. After a failed attack against NATO forces near a German town, the Soviet general concluded that choppers don't fit anymore in missiles saturated battlefields. The book was published in 1986.
I mean it makes sense, if your army is set up to work in a certain way you need to play the game that way else you invest a lot into something you dont use and the other parts of your army take a hit because of that... on the other hand, knowing your army is set up for heavily using helicopters would usually lead to people target that achilles heel.... One thing i wonder, is it easier to train helicopter pilots than jet pilots? I would assume so but i have no clue so i might be dead wrong.
Both have incredibly high skill ceiling, how russians perceive that is open to discussion but i've seen excellent handling from both Ka-52 and Su-25 pilots. I'd say initial fixed wing aircraft training is easier, a plane innately wants to stay in the air.
@@Klovaneer i hear often that helicopter npilots are cowboys. I didnt believe that until i saw a bell something civilian helo hauling cargo underslung and dong that crane oendulum whip around to perfectly place it without a single correction. So yea there is deffo a high ceiling. I was more curious about the point of getting combat ready, and i guess pure logistics pilots are also differently trained from attack helos?
There's a larger pool of civilian helicopter pilots to draw from. Especially in the more far east parts of russia with bad infrastructure where Helicopters are used super heavily.
It seems to me that Russia’s doctrine seems to depend, more than competing doctrines, on numerical superiority. The idea of Deep Battle, where one attacks all along the line, looking for weakness, requires you to have enough troops at every point on the line that you can potentially make a breakthrough if the line is weak there. That sounds like a lot of troops, many more than just having a single Schwerpunkt.
and US doctrine depends on what...fantasy? Hapless 3rd world nations as opponents? Isn't that what NATO does now? Wars are basically won most often by numerical superiority
So basically Russian tactics are good they just have to practice them more .The Russians build sold choppers . the Mi-8 has done great service in many countries .. reliable.. high lift..good payload .Always impressed with the Kamov helicopter and variants too which redirects power wasted in conventional helicopters for torque compensation to driving another main rotor albeit with more complexity .These choppers get 20% more lift for the same power . Its also a safer chopper to dismount from as the rear rotor is a real hazard .Choppers can swing around suddenly and collect troops with the rear rotor and so on . Also they are prone to breaking off and once that rear rotor is lost so is the chopper...and crew . The Kamov alligator blows the rotors off and allows crew to eject .. impressive ..works too
they forgot Afghanistan and the operations that Soviet troops carried out where helicopters became almost everything, the golden era of Soviet special forces
Loved the content, I think your vids will be more palatable if you utilized cuts so that stutters, restatements, and many other things can be removed making your presentation look much more professional especially for a complex subject like military history. Keep up the good work please!
It’s really no surprise as rotary aircraft remain one of the most versatile tools in any modern combat forces. However they are only effective mainly when the adversary they are used against is less than a near peer adversary force. For example Russia couldn’t simply use helicopters effectively as a combat force deployment asset against someone like China or the U.S…
@@Rokaize Helos are vulnerable to manpads. Jets are vulnerable to big SAMs like the S300 in the air and ballistic missile strikes on the ground. Tanks to atgm. Artillery to counterbattery. You’re not being realistic. In real wars, all assets are attritted at a horrible rate.
That’s what I kept thinking throughout the video. When has this actually worked? All the airmobile VDV successes have been sneak attacks before or immediately when hostilities broke out. As soon as the actual war begins, they always turn their paratroopers into glorified infantry.
I'm surprised you didn't mention the use of helicopters in the Soviet war in Afghanistan, this made huge use of mobile troops and was where they developed much of their approach to warfare
The problem with offensive helo tactics is the proliferation of manpads and anti helo equipment. Yes, jets have to deal with AA too, but the kind of systems used to shoot down jets is limited in numbers but covering a wide area. Making it easy to know the general area of danger which you can use in your plans. You can't hide a S400 or Patriot behind a bush. You can however hide manpads in lots of bushes. Made in mass, they can be carefully spread across the front line for hundreds of miles. Meaning a helo will almost always be at risk while on the offense hovering into a surprise manpad trap. This is why offensives with helos are so costly now.
To add a bit of background to Soviet doctrinal use of helicopters, apparently the Soviets were initially very critical and somewhat dismissive of the American's usage of helicopters in Vietnam. Reportedly it took a few years for them to warm up to the concept of dedicated attack helicopters. I could have sworn that I read a source that more outlined Soviet attitudes towards helicopters/attack helicopters in somewhere, maybe even a translated Soviet journal article, but I can't remember where. The one source I do remember is: Culhane, Kevin V. (1977). Student research report- The Soviet attack helicopter
Attrition is a thing in war. It would be nice if we didn’t lose any equipment in combat but the reality is that isn’t the reality. The question is does it have great usefulness that makes it worth the cost of replacing the equipment when it is destroyed. Helicopters certainly do.
Just like with tanks, there are still things that helicopters can do that nothing else can do a sufficient degree. So just like tanks, they are killable but still valuable. Every modern military still uses and will continue to use helicopters
Manpads rarely pose such threat to modern helicopters like Ka-52, the avionics and EWar on this helicopter is a state of the art, and the fact that not even tail hit can stop it, is a major component of survivability under fire from Manpads. The number of lost Ka-52 is extremely low when you compare it with how many flights they do. If manpads would be as effective as people think they are, then Ka-52 wouldn't be a living legend to the point that "every helicopter in Ukraine is considered as Ka-52". Something to consider.
It is not just the Russians who can't stop using helicopters. One of my friend also cannot stop using helicopters; despite him 'the pilot' being more dangerous to the helicopter than the enemy's missile. He brought us countless defeats in squad and rising storms 2; and never giving up his dream of becoming the one true pilot (he is actually trying his best).
Just about general/historical helicopter doctrine, what occurred to me is that making light infantry air mobile, even with gunships, doesn’t stop them being light infantry.
Seems like those soviet air assualts are outdated now just due to information technology The successful examples of the past (Czechia, Afghan) worked due to the inability of the enemy to react but today we knew about the air assault on hostomel before it even got there, videos of helos charging towards it were online before they had even landed! News had picked up all the IL's taking off to follow up whilst they were still in Russia.
Some of the desantniks were even bragging about the upcoming operation on socmed days before it started. And that shit has continued throughout the war. Absolutely no opsec. We heard about all those gathering areas and AHAs that got bombed just by tracking cellphones. And though Russia has tried to stamp it out, conscripts keep using their phones where they're not supposed to...
Had to watch this twice because I knew TinTin never went to Vietnam but then lost confidence and had to spend 10 minutes researching in order to repair the fabric of my universe.
When your agricultural land is the least productive of all major producers you never accumulate the excess capital to invest in an internal highway system. This leads to the Russians dependency on rail to move everything from their short crop of spring wheat to troops. Helos are their "rapid" mode of transportation. Need to transport oil engineers to a rig in Siberia or put out a fire on the tundra it's the only thing going to get it there in a reasonable time when your country covers 11 time zones. It' has been only within recent times that the Russians have fielded "specialized" rotor craft. From the beginning they have all had those Russian qualities of being simple to operate/repair, cargo capable, rough/hardy design with the ability to land on rough airfields. We have all seen that the "dreams" of Russian "deep strike/penetration" not materialize. Just because you have the capabilities on paper to do something (in this case an "air envelopment") does not mean your army can. In fact, they have devolved into using tactics seen in WW2. Their army has always been an artillery army, supplied by rail (rail units are attached to every maneuver BN). You fire tens of thousands of shells a day, move forward as little as yards and then do it again the next day and the next day. Look at all of Russia major conflicts, the first year is always a shitshow (the Russians have been invaded 50 times in their history) and then one of two things happen. They adapt or in cases of invasion of the motherland their weather degrades the attacking forces allowing the Russians time to adapt and push them back.
“the first year is always a shitshow ”. This seems to be the case for most militaries in a long war, when they discover (a) what worked in the exercises doesn’t work as well when the enemy are seriously shooting back, and (b) the enemy forces are just as confused, so they don’t react the way you expected.
That last point is absolute BS. Russian climate is as detrimental to a Russian infantryman as it is to any invader. It was Russians who degraded Napoleon, not the weather. The same goes for Germans.
@@ВладиславВладислав-и4юCrimea required the A team of Britain and France fighting Russia. The Japanese war was being fought away from Russia's main base of strength, while Russia spans out to Asia, most the population, economy and military are in Europe. The war in Finland happened after Stalin had killed all the competent officers
What is strange to me is that IFV all don´t have some simple low power radar just to check if there are copters around. Something like the bofors 40mm would be pretty dangerous to a Hind. But as it is now (as we seen in Ukraine). a chopper can be hovering just a few km away and they troops on the ground not have a clue its even there. Stingers is all well and good, but they are typically mostly usefull when either its to late, or if you just happen to spot a chopper passing.
For one thing, a radar is a terrific beacon for missiles to home in on or to alert artillery. For another, helos spend a lot of their time hiding behind stuff where radar won’t see them. Then add in maintenance and limited space and weight carrying capacity.
@@TheGreatAmphibian You also have the problem that autocannons lik ea 40mm doesn't have the range to target a helicopter 10km or more away where it can still engage you.
@@Punisher9419 Well, yes. To be honest I didn’t bother reading past the first sentence - I assumed the radar would be used to trigger countermeasures like smoke, etc.
@@TheGreatAmphibian I would say you are totally wrong about that. There are loads of wide band low power radar that would be incredibly hard to use for targeting. A modern solid state radar is incredibly light, take barley any space and are basically maintenance free. So i would say you are wrong on all points. Those radar system are already implemented in a host of addon equipment. Archer for example got 3 of them. one for the self defens pod, one artillery radar and one outbound radar.
@@Punisher9419 The attacks is barley ever.. or pretty much non existent on those distances. Most attacks are in 2-3 km distances, and at a top 5. Even if the radar wouldn´t see the helicopter(that it most likely would due to the rotor basically being a radar reflector), it would still the the incoming missiles, being able to engage them, and then also figure out there origin and engage the place of origin.. Also worth saying that the 40mm shells exist in a smart version that prefragment before intercepting the target.
The unguided 70mm missiles we see helicopters (and aircraft) zooming up to launch, then peel off spraying decoy flares. How accurate are they? Can they hit something being aimed at, or are the mostly "spray and pray"?
Russian tactics are very much spray and pray, or massed fires to level cities regardless of collateral damage. The unguided missiles on the Ukrainian side are more due to lack of availability of alternatives; US Forces would rain Hellfires. Lack of air superiority on all sides making air operations risky is also a big factor.
I think it's somewhere in the middle? GPS etc lets you know where you are in relation to your target so not too difficult to calculate a firing solution to dump your rockets into a target grid square. Maybe WWII levels of accuracy?
I wondered that myself until i saw a thermal video of the impacts. Its about the spread and accuracy of cluster munitions. Maybe 200 meter spread. Granted the pilot got everything else right.
They are targeting defensive positions to make the defenders duck, while their infantry advance. It's like aiming at an barn door with a shot gun loaded with bird shot.
@@jsimmons9969 But they still have older or Soviet-era stuff. Not Apache helicopters or A10 ground assault aircraft or, god forbid, something like the AC-130 gunship. Or F15s for that matter. Nor have they spent years using these things in joint exercises with NATO nations.
@@surelyyoujokemeinfailure7531 I'm a bot for being smarter then you, jesus. Yes. Both are useless in a peer to peer war. This is common sense. Why are u struggling?
Helicopters are always high loss assets. In the Vietnam war the U.S. lost 5,607 helicopters. Many air crew Medal of Honor awardees from the Vietnam war were helicopter air crew for good reason. I was a helicopter repairer that spent two years in Iraq and in the two years I spent there I can say that I personally saw four helicopters either written off and bombed in place or packed up in a C5 and sent back to the states because they were damaged beyond our capability to repair them. One of them was actual battle damage, a UH60 struck by an IED an enterprising insurgent had placed on top of a telephone pole because he noticed the helicopters always flew over poles, not between them. Given the intensity of the conflict in Ukraine I’m honestly surprised they’ve only lost 100 so far.
My question: why is losing 100 helicopters in over 100 weeks in a very damn intense combat against a country that had Europe's largest air defense network BEFORE they received western air defenses such a bad result?
@@chrisstrebor Yes actually and officially so. More generally the buildup from 2014 means that in 2022 Ukraine had greater military capabilities than all of NATO countries except the United States and Turkey.
the notion that the AFU was weak or 2nd rate- they'd have stomped any army in NATO including the USA, who could not have stomached the casualties. largest and best equipped army in Europe for the past 2 years.
Exactly, just as Russian infantry serve as a mechanism to drain the enemy of small arms ammunition, Russian helicopters appear to be designed to attrite western manpads
your speaking tempo is native level speed, you must have to speak English at work or something because if anything you are speaking quickly even for natives. As someone who can speak no foreign languages I think this is very impressive
Because all modern land doctrine derives from WWI, in which the use of already relatively modern but not yet mobile, artillery led to positional stalemate. We can trace if not whole evolution here but at least one of the critical points: WWI: 1. Creating operational stalemate through the use of concentrated artillery fire against attacking forces. Infantry also gained increased resilience through the widespread introduction of automatic weapons (machine guns). 2. As a response to this: attempts at even greater concentration of firepower, but not in the form of more or less dispersed means of offense and defense, but by creating localized points of stress in the offense with tanks, hand machine guns, and special assault squads. WWII: 1. Actual development of solutions to positional stalemate in WWI. Development of not separate local means, but whole military doctrines based on these means. 2. The final transformation of positional warfare into "motor warfare". Advantage is given to those units that have increased mobility while maintaining firepower relative to more "traditional" types of army units. Mechanization of infantry and artillery: infantry carriers and various types of self-propelled platforms for artillery. Post WWII: 1. An attempt at greater interaction between air power and infantry. Not only in terms of coordinating strikes, but also in giving infantry even greater mobility while maintaining both strike and defensive capabilities. 2. Even greater development of technical means of coordination and control of troops. Greater reduce response between an event and the need to react to that event.
Russia has always built very good helicopters , It's kind of a conundrum They're so vulnerable to shoulder fired weapons But at the same time. Their ability to fly low and hug the train Protects them from more robust surface air missiles And radar systems , Something that there fixed wing aircraft are highly vulnerable to Particularly if those missiles are supplied by nato . The k a fifty two the only helicopter with an ejection seat , Brilliant
How is this even a question? Helicopters are extremely useful and versatile in both civilian and military sectors. Why does Russia still use computers? Why does Russia still use drones? Why do Russians still eat food? We can ask stupid questions all day.
...it is a valid question, because what it actually means is "How necessary is the speed and responsiveness of helicopter-based fires to the Russian way of war, and for what reasons have cheaper and less vulnerable systems been unable to fulfill the same role?" While helicopters are generally useful for militaries, some armies have more or less focus on them. South Korea, for instance, has a more defensive doctrine, so they stress land-based artillery more than attack helicopters. They still have the copters, but the war they'd need to fight requires fewer of them.
A bit of an odd title for the video, a few minutes in you list all the roles helicopters are capable of fulfilling. So why would they stop using them? Other than that minor complaint another good video. 👍
Great video and I agree when you see a good depiction of mid, late cold war the soviets descend on Nato with para troops of both the plan e and helicopter verity... Which I did not know the fine details of that... also it can be argued operational art dates back to how napoleon ran his empire's miltary if not to him.
One big problem, as in Afghanistan, MANPADS have mostly neutralized Russian frontline helicopter operations. That is why we mostly only see helicopters lobbing unguided rockets from far behind the frontlines. Air assault operations are almost unknown since Hostomel. The entire Russian doctrine for helicopter operations has been turned on its head. In addition, as we have seen recently Russian helicopter bases near the frontlines are susceptible to ATACM strikes. Pulling these bases back out of range further decreases the effectiveness of helicopter support operations. I also question how much of their stated air fleet, like much of the rest of their air forces, are actually operational. For example, I have seen reports that half of their KA-52s have been destroyed. Like the rest of the Russian military, their helicopter fleet is likely to have severe maintenance issues. The Mi-8 and MI-24 is old and parts availability may be an issue.
Manpads didn’t neutralize helicopters. They accounted for a small percentage of helicopter losses in Afghanistan. In fact, the war was halfway over by the time manpads came into the country. They certainly changed things. But helicopters were still completely vital to the Soviets in Afghanistan even with stingers around
MANPADS were a bitch but they didn't impact helicopters in afghanistan nearly as bad as FPV drones have AFVs in ukraine. And there wasn't a single front in afghanistan, helicopters were vital to countering insurgencies. Their last afghanistan operation, Magistral, heavily relied on helicopter infantry insertion on strategic heights. Hostomel has failed because the logistic train from belarus got mauled, they underappreciated the force needed to escort it basically running trucks naked. Everything after that is pure speculation like with them running out of missiles every month.
At the begining of the war there was this Ukrainian oligarch getting arrested for treason and I recall part of the accusation was, that one of his factories produced vital parts of Russian helicopters and he kept delivering after the war started. I would really like to know, whether they run on their last set of spares or if they found substitutes.
@@brunsheimmasterbaitwilfrie2811 That would probably be Motor-sich that produced helicopter turbines but russians have long since pulled that back to Klimov plant which is the original developer of engines in question. In 2014 actually.
In the mid 1980's the West changed doctrine completely. They went towards using NGO's, financial systems, sanctions, political/military coups, assassinations, large drones, special forces and propaganda to achieve their goals. This approach reduced military casualties and can almost completely hidden from their citizens. The last European/US/NATO Divisional level exercise was OP Lionheart in 1984. Unfortunately this change of approach has led to the absolute atrophy of Western Militaries (excluding USA), to the extent that most of the EU nations don't have Armies, but rather, very small boutique militaries. If it came to a conventional conflict RIGHT NOW today, Russia would crush Europe completely. It would be a humiliating defeat. Lucky for Europe, it's clear that Russia does not want war with Europe.
That's pretty laughable. There is a conventional conflict going on right now, and Russia can't even quickly take Ukraine quickly, without NATO even being truly serious about supplying weapons, let alone troops. And the former WARSAW Pact countries that are now part of NATO aren't the slackers the western half of NATO is. Nor are the Fins or Swedes. And if you back up the determination of those countries to not ever again be under the Russian boot, with the air might of modern NATO planes, it would not be pretty for Russia. Which is why Russia doesn't want a war in Europe. It isn't the USSR. It's a country trying to pretend it is still as might as the USSR, without the industrial or economic capacity to be such.
1)Вертолеты вооружены ракетами на 15 км, изделие 305 ЛМУР там теле наведение, чтобы в форточку залетало 2)Вертолеты вооружены вихрями и атаками для борьбы с тяжелой техникой, что мы увидели в огромном количестве во время украинского "контрнаступления" 3)Вертолеты работают как средство поражения врага по территории и как активная поддержка пехоты, например при штурме городов 4)современные ка52, ка52м, ми28 вооружены бортовыми системами для борьбы с пво врага, в сети хватает роликов, как ракеты пзрк пролетают мимо вертолетов 5)Вертолеты учувствуют в боях против дронов. Ми 28 сбивали беспилотники на подлете к Москве, видео тоже есть, вертолеты уничтожают безэкипажные катера на Черном море, роликов тоже полно 6)Вертолеты занимаются эвакуацией летчиков, или доставкой спецназа 7)вертолеты - дешевле самолетов, как в производстве, так и в обслуживании
In 2020 Finnish Defence Forces released a conscript training video where an invading nation tries a Hostomel like airfield capture operation. However this was not at all a trick they just recently figured out. Static defences had already been placed on some airfields to fire at landing aircraft since late 1960s.
Proper deployment of Helicopters means they must show up unexpectedly. Of course, that's a basic tenet of war fighting: If you can surprise your opponent, that's half the battle.
Helicopters are the close air support of the spearheads of any assault. They have to prepare the advance and clear those streets cause you need to keep the speed and momentum on your side. Have you ever seen a column of cars on a red light ? If everyone slows starts to drive when the red light turns into green you are much faster than watching on the brake lights of the car just in front of you. No one should be able to stop the spearhead to keep that rolling and all the following units too. That is the key point in any breakthrough deep penetration attack which Helicopters can provide and jets just rather limited cause they are flying too fast to recognice and identify targets.
Nice, thank you! Well, the Soviet/Russian doctrine is nothing new. The German Wehrmacht had similar concepts. The Allies in the WW2 wanted to implement these concepts on the D-Day and later on in the air landing operation in Holland... Helicopters became basically a replacement for the ground-attack planes from the WW2 like IL-2 or Ju-87 (Stuka). As for the "deep operations" in Ukraine, you see that the lack of training, mass incompetence and lack of resources on a strategic level on the Russian side limited the helicopters to a very shy combat machine firing from large distances and never crossing the front line. Likely, nobody can see now "cavalry charges" made deep into the Ukrainian territory.
One detail, Chris... as far as I know it's "facilitate", not "faciliate". According to Google Translate, Germany does not use the word "fazilitieren", but "fazilitierung" apparently does exist.
"Fazilitieren" reminds me of the old german aristocrats who spoke "Kauderwelsch" (a mixture of French and German) instead of today's widespread Denglish. It wouldn't be used by a radio speaker or TV moderator.
I'm amazed these machines can even buzz around like this. Relatively slow, noisy clattering things, ready to be shredded by AAA and SAMs. Would be awesome to see a deep dive into how well Mi28 and KA-50 have performed in real combat. No doubt countries with large helicopter fleets are watching very closely.
It is cute seeing how a western guy tries to understand and to put logic behind Russian mentality and actions. The short answer is "because they have them". Russia is using helicopters because it has them. Right now they'd prefer to have extra btr3 s rather than helicopter but if they have them they will use them. Same reason they use anything that will perceivebly give them any edge, 80 yr old tanks or troop transports, Chinese bikes and so on. Pretty much the only time they used the copters the way it was supposed to was in the first month of the invasion. There is no 4d chess here at play, there is no doctrinal or otherwise reason. But yeah, I always have fun listening to western guys trying to shape Russian decisions or actions through some logical or rational lense.
Helicopters, and tanks, won’t be discontinued until a clear and obvious replacement becomes available. Battleships weren’t phased out because they could be sunk, they were phased out because for the same raw materials and fewer crew you could build an aircraft carrier and destroyer bs just a battleship. I don’t think helicopters will be phased out until human bodies no longer need to be transported in and out of the battlefield.
The US has always focused on precision, from our close air support to our artillery (traditional and missiles). That is not the case with the Soviets. Artillery was almost always against targets of mass and the Soviets did not put much of an emphasis on precision air support. [Now I am wondering if the Soviets even did close air support with fixed wing aircraft - with teh exception of the Su-25.] In many ways, Soviet (and now Russian) helicopters served the same purpose as the German Stukas in providing close and immediate infantry (or mechanized) fire support during advances.
Stukas provided tactical bombing support, not close air support. The Ju 87 wasn't even ideally suited for the latter role. Russian use of (attack) helicopters is much more akin to the use of the IL-2 ground attack aircraft by the Soviet air force during WW2. See Chris's video about that subject which he posted recently.
Russia keeps using helicopters because only helicopters can do helicopter things. They are an incredibly useful and flexible asset with unique abilities. It's not the helicopters' fault that Russia has extremely poor doctrine and absolute lack of concern for loss of life and materiel.
Post WWII, the West returned to its roots and built up anti-insurgent, colonialist military forces. Russia never abandoned its history and continued to develop and field armies fit for mass-scale land battles
I don’t think that is correct. The western forces still have what’s required to fight a land war and to do other missions as required. Now there may be a case to say a large land war was not expected as nobody thought a full scale invasion of a country in Europe would happen.
Let’s not forget KA-52’s proficient usage of ATGMs against Ukrainian armour has been significantly especially last summer and it’s still used allot today. another thing is the cruise missile Izdeliye 305 used every day against targets in Ukraine
Ummmmm... Pretty much every army in the world use helicopters, for the same reasons. Don't see anything special or different to any army... Americans used them in every invasion: Afghanistan, Iraq, Vietnam... In most of them against an opponent who doesn't have any meaningful air defense...
Side note, whenever I look at the cockpit of a Mi-8 I always think “hmm, is there anyway we can get more switches in here? I feel like we need more switches.”
No matter the cope, we all saw Russia change its helicopter doctrine to a way more successful one. From 2023 on, theyve been losing multitudes less down to single digits per month now. They used their choppers to crush the Ukrainian armored counter offensive so bad Ukraine gave up on using leopards after losing 30% of their whole stockpile in a few days. Keep coping like its Berlin 45'🤦
They aren’t losing them anymore because they aren’t flying aggressive sorties you clown. Hiding behind the horizon, at treetop level, waiting for the enemy to come to you isn’t something to brag about. Their rotary wing fleet has been completely defanged, and is unable to provide any meaningful support for the constant failed attacks the Russians have made every other week, for the last year.
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*Contrary to my show notes I forgot to mention Soviet rotary-wing operations in Afghanistan. Big picture doesn't change but have a quote here:*
"[Soviet] Counterinsurgency [CI] forces conducted a variety of ground and heliborne (desant) operations, usually platoon to company size […]. CI forces were normally inserted by helicopter into numerous positions from which they could support the advance of motorised rifle [MR] units, preempt ambushes, and occupy blocking positions [blokirovaniye] […]. They also carried out large and small raids […] supported by ground-attack fixed-wing aircraft and attack helicopters."
McMichael, Scott (2002) “The Soviet Afghan War”, in Higham, Robin and Frederick W. Kagan, The Military History of the Soviet Union, Palgrave, p. 268.
you mentioned ww2, Korea and Vietnam. What about Afghanistan?
Thanks for the Afghan fill-in, sir.
Afganistan and irak
Desant can mean paratroopers too.
@@zaco-km3su I think he covered that, although I would have said 'aerial insertions'.
The most surprising thing about the Russo-Ukrainian conflict so far is that general public seems to have completely forgotten that war involves casualties.
🤔 could you expand on that one?
@@WALTERBROADDUS I think the take away is that the public in the west became very used to the low intensity, precise, counter terror operations in the Middle East. Or the overwhelming advantage that the west had in the Gulf Wars.
That western public’s came to expect war to continue being like the past two or three decades, where western militaries might suffer less than a few hundred casualties annually. Now we sit on the sidelines of a near peer war and it is eye opening to see the expense involved both in lives and riches.
@@johnkole953 I think it's more folks in the West would not throw away an entire generation on this operation. Both sides have degenerated into attrition Warfare. Also Western people have a political system that would have removed leadership by now.
only money the grift must continue
@@johnkole953 the thing is the west isn't fighting directly and doesn't seem to care much about how many Ukrainians lives are lost
For the same reason the Americans didn't gave up on helos after losing more than 1000 during Vietnam, because they're pretty useful.
5.000, in total.
@@ibubezi7685 5000 in 20 years.
Ask not what you can do to the helicopter, but what the helicopter can do to you. Even if it's not invincible, it still does things no other platform can do quite as well
No equipment is in invincible, the only criteria is whether it can do what you need it to while it's still usable.
Has the US ever conducted an operation overseas without crashing at least 1 helicopter?
A continent-sized country that has 2 million square kilometers of swamp will be irresistibly drawn to choppahs.
. . . that then amounts to 1 'choppah' per 1500 km² in total and finally to 1 actively usable 'choppah' per 10000 km² for all the many assigned tasks . . .
They DON'T have 2 million square km of swamp.
@@zaco-km3su yeah, mostly dense forests. Maybe 15% swamps total.
@@zaco-km3su That depends. Russıans living in Moscow & Saint Petersburg see the rest of the population as goblins living in swampland.
@@zaco-km3su Do they have any jungle? Or have I played too much MGS3...
My memory of US army helicopters is that when the air force split off from the army in 1947, they wanted to control all aviation assets, including aircraft carriers and ground support. The navy stopped their part of it, and the army managed to retain support of very small aircraft and helicopters, because all the air force really wanted was bombers and fighters. Thus one reason the army turned to helicopters so much during the Korean War (1950-3) and Vietnam War (1965-1972) was because it was all they were allowed to have, and to everybody's surprise, helicopters turned out to be pretty darned useful, especially once they started using turbine power instead of air-cooled radials left over from WW II.
How much of this is true, in the practical sense? If the army had kept ground support planes and small transports, would helicopter usage have been slower?
And how much of other countries' helicopter usage was influenced by the US army's success with the Huey and other early turbine helicopters?
"it was all they were allowed to have"
That isn't really true. Because the Army was/is able to get fixed wing aircraft whenever there was a valid mission requirement for it. What the Nat. Sec. Act of 47 was designed to prevent was the creation of duplicate and redundant air forces in the DoD.
"to everybody's surprise"
To no ones surprise. The utility of helicopters was very evident and development of them is almost as old as airplanes.
US Army Aviation does have fixed-wing assets. And many of the advances should be credited to the Marine Corps development of tactics and machines.
Spot on. Remember when the Army fought to get the C-27 fleet? The USAF was not supporting them so the Army wanted them. Then the USAF fought them tooth and nail and the Army said ok, support us then. And then as the USAF could, they could they dumped them. We don't want them and you can't have them.
@@gregoryschmitz2131 Those the C27s the Coast Guard wound up with?
@@gregoryschmitz2131 And the A-10, same thing. Air Force pilots want to zoom around, not drop things in the mud
The Ka-52 played a significant role in stopping Ukrainian armored columns during the Ukrainian summer counteroffensive
Is there a reason why Stingers weren’t doing the trick at that time?
Edit: guys thank you for the answers but this was literally explained dozens of times a full month ago, you don't need to keep replying
@@AlexLee-dc2vb Maybe they were not in range to use manpads but another thing to consider is that the Ka-52 fires long range anti-tank guided missiles so I’m sure the alligators were sitting behind the frontline
@@AlexLee-dc2vb range was the reason.
The russian helicopters flew low above the ground and shot their AT missiles at a range of 10-12 km.
Ukraine had no answer to that.
But the USA gave Ukraine an answer to the helicopters after the ukrainian offensive had already failed. The answer were ATACMS. They did destroy many russian helicopters on the ground.
I think someone said it already but the ukes were short of longer range interceptors and the Russians were able to stand off beyond the range of manpads. As the ukes have shown, it’s much easier to dictate the terms of the engagement when you are defending.
Stand off munitions !
There was a growing concern during the 1980s that in the event of a war between the Warsaw Pact and NATO that the Soviets would be able to land a very large force of troops support by attack helicopter behind NATO lines so that NATO forces would be caught in a pincer movement between the two. One proposal put forward was for a very agile aircraft which would fly at very low level which would hunt down these helicopters. It would be of canard configuration to improve agility with a turboprop engine mounted at the rear and possibly carrying the M61 Vulcan rotary cannon and a number of air to air missiles. The project was halted when the Soviet Union collapsed.
If I remember correctly that project was somewhat inspiration for polish small ground support aircraft PZL - 230 Skorpion
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PZL-230_Skorpion
SABA - Small Agile Battlefield Aircraft
@@rudboypaintbrawl Thanks. I'd forgotten about the Skorpion. It reminds me somewhat of the Sukhoi Su-35 which first flew about the same time.
@@billywoods3337 That was it. Thanks I was trying to remember that. Well at least the missile made it to service.
It would have made a great ground attack aircraft in Afghanistan instead of the A-10. Nothing against the A-10 but it was like using a Rolls Royce for pizza delivery
There were various takes at the anti-helicopter role... For example the AlphaJet and Hawk weren't just trainers, in wartime one of their roles would have been hunting helicopters with their gun pods and Sidewinders. Arguably the MBB Lampyridae might have covered that nice as well, as a stealth fighter it would have been far less vulnerable over the FEBA, and it was a bit small for an air superiority fighter.
A crucial piece of Soviet development of helicopters is actually more *civil* than *military* (although there were strong, related military drivers).
Basically, Siberia and the southwestern USSR had (and still have, now under the Russian Federation) very poor transportation infrastructure in most locations. The need for vertical lift heavy transport and STOL transport were critical to being able to exploit the natural resources of these regions. Likewise, the *defense* of these regions heavily drove towards a robust helicopter and STOL capacity.
This in turn made incorporating helicopters heavily into defense doctrine *in general* a common sense driver - might as well make a virtue of a requirement, so as to "dual use" the capacity you were going to have to develop and buy anyway - since you need the helos and short field cargo lift to handle stuff in remote regions, it's only logical to incorporate those capabilities into your war plans for Western Europe.
Russia inherited a military shaped by Soviet requirements, which is entirely predictable that they'd lean in on areas that outside factors *forced* their Soviet predecessors to develop heavily.
Yep. Resources (to include farmland) in the vast interior of Russia east of the Urals is extremely dispersed such that it does not make economic sense to have significant roadways that needs to be maintained regularly. This is especially true in the permafrost regions that turns into a muddy marsh in the summer. It barely warrants rail lines. However, there are pockets of natural resource wealth. The helicopter is perfect as a means of transport from these pockets to the rail lines when the roadways (which are poor in the best of times) are not passable.
That's a very interesting analysis, thanks
Great analysis
Very good point
I've worked on mine sites in Siberia. Helicopters are generally too expensive. Transport is by Truck during winter using frozen over rivers and lakes. In summer or the thaw nothing gets in or out that way and STOL is used. The Helicopter is useful for establishing the camp.
Woke up at 3:30am to pee. Can’t sleep. Learning about Russian helicopters.
Should have mentioned that mass air mobility forces the enemy to take a more spread out defensive posture. You have to be ready for attacks basically anywhere, and maintain many small reaction units all over. The threat alone is valuable.
Important context to keep in mind is this is a peer to peer war, or LSCO whichever buzzword you want to use. But it’s a very different war from the COIN operations we’re accustomed to, and something NATO planners need to look closely at as we inch closer and closer to a possible hot war in the Indo-Pacific.
In Vietnam, the U.S. alone lost 5607 helicopters, and 10,000 aircraft total. We lost 134 in Afghanistan.
The VKS’ performance in this war has been underwhelming, however, their losses are far from crippling. And it’s quite likely annual Russian aircraft production is able to keep pace with its current loss rate, which has dramatically decreased since the very kinetic opening days of the war.
Well said.
Their losses are crippling.
It's Russia. Not the economic powerhouse that is the US.
Well, that's not entirely true. Not only because Russian aircraft production since the fall of the Soviet Union was not very high to begin with and a lot of production capacity was lost. But also because Russian Air Force is rather untypical in the fact that they rely a lot on planes that are no longer in production or produced in very low numbers. So lot of these losses in Ukraine are very hard or even impossible to replace, because that manufacturing capacity simply doesn't exist anymore.
And also it is always not about absolute numbers, but what they mean for the force. Yes, for example over 3.000 Hueys were lost in Vietnam, but more than 16.000 were built and at the end of the war despite the losses US had more Hueys that they had a need for. Which btw was one of the reason for those high numbers of losses, that especially at the end they were considered a surplus, not something that needs to be repaired if it is too much fuss. On the other hand, out of prewar Russian Kamov Ka-52 fleet, probably something around 60 % of prewar capacity has been already lost and such rate of attrition is pretty much crippling for any force.
@@dusanbolek8004 I don't even see Ukraine using helicopters these days.
Do note that the VKS is using its most modern forces, while it is quite large, the lost aircraft are pretty much solely the most modern units they have.
If we take their pre-war domestic and export deliveries as a baseline, and add say, 40% to that to account for crash production cycles, they have lost about 9-10 years of modern strike helicopter production (ka52, mi28, mi35), and about 5-6 of modern strike/multirole plane (su34).
They also lost around 30 CAS (SU25), that's around 4 years for modernization, they no longer produce that airframe.
No, they are not keeping up with the losses, but again, they are something they can rebuild.
Then again, the announced deliveries of the f35 for 2024/2025 are larger than the entirety of modern Russian fixed wing air force (su35, su34, modernized mig31, mig35). Just to compare the scale we are talking about.
if you mentioned Market Garden - one problem was that you can't evaquate the ground forces, it's one way ticket for gliders and patatroops. with helicopter you can do it in relativly ease.
The reason isn't so much due to doctrine as much as war necessity. Russia clearly is aware of the risks of operating helicopters in contested airspace but needs the utility provided by highly mobile firepower. Slow moving or static ground based artillery is now at least as vulnerable near the front lines because of the transparency provided by drones and satellites. Of course a MANPADS can take down a helicopter but a drone can take out a piece of ground equipment too. Russia has a high tolerance for risk and an aggressive war objective, this then leads to using everything available that can provide military utility.
. . . until now it are always (some) people who are aware of something - NOT RU !!!
Exactly, this idiot made a while video and just blubbered without saying anything meaningful😂😂
People forgot it a war , you lost your equipment, during Vietnam war the american lost thousands of helicopter , doesn't mean helicopter are shit , it just proved them useful assets in a war
Helicopters did help last year during the starting stages of the Ukrainian counteroffensive last year
True.
Offensive*
@@skitidet4302 no he was right counteroffensive
@@michaelmclaughlin4889 If you're going to call it that you need to put it in quotation marks since it's not a counteroffensive, just an offensive. Just because some propagandist thought counteroffensive sounded better doesn't actually make it so.
@@skitidet4302 No. The other person was right and you are incorrect. If someone invades your home and starts ethnically cleansing your family, fighting back counts as a 'counteroffensive'.
'Offensive' moreso describes russia's attempted invasion of Kyiv, at the beginning of russıa's failed attempt at quickly conquering Ukraine.
As if everyone else is not using them
This was my take as well.
@@obsidianjane4413 yeah it's very weird, if the US where losing 15% of their helikopters full scale war against a near 🍐 , and they are still are still a positive I'd think it'd be stupid to say that still using them is stupid.
If you're choosing to focus specifically on the why of *one* party doing or using something, you're not automatically assuming nobody else is; it means you're choosing to limit what to talk about so it doesn't bloat beyond your current focus.
@@marek9784US lost dozens in Iraq and hundreds in Vietnam
@@atomic0914 During the Vietnam War, the United States military lost at least 5,195 helicopters to combat or accidents
The answer is a question.... Why should they? When in war, you do not omit any asset unless they are extremely vulnerable.
Yes, the question is; Why would they do it? High speed air-to-air drones. Kind of like air mines. As is, pretty safe low and behind the lines.
The Russians have a branch for airmobile/air assault units and paratroopers. It's not a surprise that they will use helicopters a lot. The Deep Battle concept was developed by the Soviets as a response to the problems of WW1 that the Russian Empire faced. Paratroopers were part of the deep battle doctrine. Thing is that during WW2 the first helicopters were used by the US. The Soviets found out about this and they developed their own helicopters because they thought airmobile/air assault units could be just as useful as paratroopers and maybe that airmobile units could be used when paratroopers can't. The Russians got the Soviet equipment, Soviet military thinking and a whole lot of land. Helicopters have their uses in hilly and mountainous areas.
The Hind looks exactly like a helicopter the bad guys would have
@YellowLab-rb6xn I love how it looks. It doesn’t look like friend
Probably because so many Western movies used it as a helicopter the bad guys have.
Remember: weapons don't have loyalties. Soldiers do.
Unlike Apache and Comanche,names of native tribes that US government have exterminated.
They always show it in the hands of bad guys in videos games and movies 😂
Even tho even half of us allies use it its an amazing peice of equipment
For me is most bad ass looking helicopter ever
Yeah, choppers are awesome. Drones are good in these frozen frontline condition, however when the frontline breaks that heavy firepower and airlifting capability will pay dividents.
Not really. Dedicated attack choppers are nearly useless in the ground attack role unless you have air dominance. This has been true since the ‘80s.
@@GrahamCStrouseno proof of this claim obviously since it's pure cope. Embarrassing
except...it won't.
everything that everyone believes about warfare is now bullshit in the age of the FPV. FPVs can stall ANY breakthrough. FFS look at the present major war.
@@GrahamCStrouse It works well enough if the enemy doesn't either
"WWWWWHHHHHHHAAAAAATTTTT MILITARY USES HELICOPTERS??????😱"
"russia has a lot of helicopters! Thats actually a bad thing!"
@@class.Cwhy ?
I haven't seen anyone do a realistic analysis on drones against helicopters. The thing is, helicopters are at their most vulnerable in takeoff and landing, ie. the moment they need to drop troops on the target area and get the copters back in air again. Defenders don't want to bombard their own airfield with heavy artillery, SAMs are rare and expensive, you can't tie down troops to defend every possible target in the potential air assault range.
What you can do is set up drone storage near the important strategic targets. As soon as you can predict reliably what the target is going to be, send up Lancets and quadcopters. Casualties taken in the first minute of the air assault really sap the attackers strength and decrease their chances of taking and holding their target. It doesn't matter whether it's VDV, their support weapons & ammunition or the copters themselves that get taken out, it's all bad. Jamming that deep in enemy territory is hard and there is no reliable kinetic defense against drones.
And this is of course only with the drones we currently have. It doesn't take much to design a barrage balloon-style suicide drone swarm with enough explosives to take copters in descent down. It's just software for existing stuff. If a helo falls as little as 10-15 meters during landing attempt everyone inside is incapacitated for the duration. Assaulting a target becomes much harder if you can't have fire support from gunships or even land directly at the target area.
Remember it was 50 years between the bi-plane and the F-15. Drone technology is going to increase at an even faster rate as there are already armed drones.
I remember reading Frank Chadwick’s designer notes. Rotor is to track as track is to foot. The lesson of Arnhem was that airborne operations had to be within range of supporting forces, especially artillery. GSFG was well provided.
As with dedicated CAS aircraft there is another advantage to helicopters - proximity to the front line, and the ability to generate sorties. If a helicopter is being maintained and resupplied minutes behind the front line then it can get there quicker.
During the Vietnam War, the United States military lost at least 5,195 helicopters to combat or accidents
300 of them were from hitting the only telephone line in the country.
Yeah, people love to bring up Iraq but forget how badly USAF got it in Viet
The number is 5607, and almost 10,000 if inlcuding fixed wing aircraft. Either way that's a huge number
@@andrew.lanc3r yeah Vietnam had incredibly well layered defensive networks of AA guns. Mobile and easily hidden and moved
Thinking about it while Russia has only 50.000 confirmed casualities in ukraine ( around same as vietnam, my source is bbc mediazona. )
Russia has only lost what 500 aircraft? ( including fixed wing & helicopters ) and for a nation with such a well developed and advanced anti air system using s300s and patriot systems, I argue thats pretty good.
Also ka50s and ka52s are amazing with real survival systems, such as a ejection seat which I think all western helicopters need.
Currently reading Red Storm Rising. After a failed attack against NATO forces near a German town, the Soviet general concluded that choppers don't fit anymore in missiles saturated battlefields.
The book was published in 1986.
I mean it makes sense, if your army is set up to work in a certain way you need to play the game that way else you invest a lot into something you dont use and the other parts of your army take a hit because of that... on the other hand, knowing your army is set up for heavily using helicopters would usually lead to people target that achilles heel....
One thing i wonder, is it easier to train helicopter pilots than jet pilots? I would assume so but i have no clue so i might be dead wrong.
Both have incredibly high skill ceiling, how russians perceive that is open to discussion but i've seen excellent handling from both Ka-52 and Su-25 pilots. I'd say initial fixed wing aircraft training is easier, a plane innately wants to stay in the air.
@@Klovaneer i hear often that helicopter npilots are cowboys. I didnt believe that until i saw a bell something civilian helo hauling cargo underslung and dong that crane oendulum whip around to perfectly place it without a single correction. So yea there is deffo a high ceiling. I was more curious about the point of getting combat ready, and i guess pure logistics pilots are also differently trained from attack helos?
There's a larger pool of civilian helicopter pilots to draw from. Especially in the more far east parts of russia with bad infrastructure where Helicopters are used super heavily.
Very thoughtful video and the comments are very interesting and informative. Great channel. Cheers from OZ
It seems to me that Russia’s doctrine seems to depend, more than competing doctrines, on numerical superiority. The idea of Deep Battle, where one attacks all along the line, looking for weakness, requires you to have enough troops at every point on the line that you can potentially make a breakthrough if the line is weak there. That sounds like a lot of troops, many more than just having a single Schwerpunkt.
and US doctrine depends on what...fantasy? Hapless 3rd world nations as opponents? Isn't that what NATO does now? Wars are basically won most often by numerical superiority
No idea when I followed this channel but glad I did. Excellent analysis
don't know if it is mistake or just illustration of mi8, but there are belarusian mi8 from 10:22
The list of helicopter advantages at 2:16 pretty much answers why Russia uses them.
So basically Russian tactics are good they just have to practice them more .The Russians build sold choppers . the Mi-8 has done great service in many countries .. reliable.. high lift..good payload .Always impressed with the Kamov helicopter and variants too which redirects power wasted in conventional helicopters for torque compensation to driving another main rotor albeit with more complexity .These choppers get 20% more lift for the same power . Its also a safer chopper to dismount from as the rear rotor is a real hazard .Choppers can swing around suddenly and collect troops with the rear rotor and so on . Also they are prone to breaking off and once that rear rotor is lost so is the chopper...and crew . The Kamov alligator blows the rotors off and allows crew to eject .. impressive ..works too
I've just discovered your channel. Really good content. Keep it up.
they forgot Afghanistan and the operations that Soviet troops carried out where helicopters became almost everything, the golden era of Soviet special forces
Loved the content, I think your vids will be more palatable if you utilized cuts so that stutters, restatements, and many other things can be removed making your presentation look much more professional especially for a complex subject like military history. Keep up the good work please!
It’s really no surprise as rotary aircraft remain one of the most versatile tools in any modern combat forces. However they are only effective mainly when the adversary they are used against is less than a near peer adversary force. For example Russia couldn’t simply use helicopters effectively as a combat force deployment asset against someone like China or the U.S…
Every weapon works better against less well-armed opponents…
@@TheGreatAmphibianYeah but especially helicopters. Which are very vulnerable to more advanced gear like manpads.
@@Rokaize Manpads are middle cold war tech. They can't be produced in a shed but neither can be ZU-23 that get mounted on pickup trucks.
@@Rokaize Helos are vulnerable to manpads. Jets are vulnerable to big SAMs like the S300 in the air and ballistic missile strikes on the ground. Tanks to atgm. Artillery to counterbattery. You’re not being realistic. In real wars, all assets are attritted at a horrible rate.
That’s what I kept thinking throughout the video. When has this actually worked? All the airmobile VDV successes have been sneak attacks before or immediately when hostilities broke out. As soon as the actual war begins, they always turn their paratroopers into glorified infantry.
I'm surprised you didn't mention the use of helicopters in the Soviet war in Afghanistan, this made huge use of mobile troops and was where they developed much of their approach to warfare
I strongly suggest Perun's video on the use of helicopters in the Ukraine.
"Helicopter is the bully of a battle field" or something along those lines
Nah
The problem with offensive helo tactics is the proliferation of manpads and anti helo equipment.
Yes, jets have to deal with AA too, but the kind of systems used to shoot down jets is limited in numbers but covering a wide area. Making it easy to know the general area of danger which you can use in your plans. You can't hide a S400 or Patriot behind a bush.
You can however hide manpads in lots of bushes. Made in mass, they can be carefully spread across the front line for hundreds of miles. Meaning a helo will almost always be at risk while on the offense hovering into a surprise manpad trap.
This is why offensives with helos are so costly now.
To add a bit of background to Soviet doctrinal use of helicopters, apparently the Soviets were initially very critical and somewhat dismissive of the American's usage of helicopters in Vietnam. Reportedly it took a few years for them to warm up to the concept of dedicated attack helicopters. I could have sworn that I read a source that more outlined Soviet attitudes towards helicopters/attack helicopters in somewhere, maybe even a translated Soviet journal article, but I can't remember where.
The one source I do remember is: Culhane, Kevin V. (1977). Student research report- The Soviet attack helicopter
Great video, Chris...👍
The question in itself is wrong. It should insteadL why for Russia using helicopters still make sense.
Sounds too neutral. Gotta make it sound anti Russian for the TH-cam algorithm.
Attrition is a thing in war. It would be nice if we didn’t lose any equipment in combat but the reality is that isn’t the reality. The question is does it have great usefulness that makes it worth the cost of replacing the equipment when it is destroyed. Helicopters certainly do.
Doctrine.😊
First thought too, but I had to press "play" regardless.
Just like with tanks, there are still things that helicopters can do that nothing else can do a sufficient degree. So just like tanks, they are killable but still valuable. Every modern military still uses and will continue to use helicopters
The distribution of Manpads is making it so that the russian helicopter force is increasingly becoming a rear line support and transport corps
Manpads rarely pose such threat to modern helicopters like Ka-52, the avionics and EWar on this helicopter is a state of the art, and the fact that not even tail hit can stop it, is a major component of survivability under fire from Manpads. The number of lost Ka-52 is extremely low when you compare it with how many flights they do. If manpads would be as effective as people think they are, then Ka-52 wouldn't be a living legend to the point that "every helicopter in Ukraine is considered as Ka-52". Something to consider.
No proof obviously
4:53 Can't believe that there's a heli with the official NATO designation of Hormone, makes it seem like the Su-75 Femboy isn't that far fetched.
It is not just the Russians who can't stop using helicopters. One of my friend also cannot stop using helicopters; despite him 'the pilot' being more dangerous to the helicopter than the enemy's missile. He brought us countless defeats in squad and rising storms 2; and never giving up his dream of becoming the one true pilot (he is actually trying his best).
Just about general/historical helicopter doctrine, what occurred to me is that making light infantry air mobile, even with gunships, doesn’t stop them being light infantry.
Seems like those soviet air assualts are outdated now just due to information technology
The successful examples of the past (Czechia, Afghan) worked due to the inability of the enemy to react but today we knew about the air assault on hostomel before it even got there, videos of helos charging towards it were online before they had even landed! News had picked up all the IL's taking off to follow up whilst they were still in Russia.
Some of the desantniks were even bragging about the upcoming operation on socmed days before it started.
And that shit has continued throughout the war. Absolutely no opsec.
We heard about all those gathering areas and AHAs that got bombed just by tracking cellphones. And though Russia has tried to stamp it out, conscripts keep using their phones where they're not supposed to...
Great episode !
Had to watch this twice because I knew TinTin never went to Vietnam but then lost confidence and had to spend 10 minutes researching in order to repair the fabric of my universe.
He passed through Indo China while he was traveling from India to China.
So, yes. But also no.
When your agricultural land is the least productive of all major producers you never accumulate the excess capital to invest in an internal highway system. This leads to the Russians dependency on rail to move everything from their short crop of spring wheat to troops. Helos are their "rapid" mode of transportation. Need to transport oil engineers to a rig in Siberia or put out a fire on the tundra it's the only thing going to get it there in a reasonable time when your country covers 11 time zones. It' has been only within recent times that the Russians have fielded "specialized" rotor craft. From the beginning they have all had those Russian qualities of being simple to operate/repair, cargo capable, rough/hardy design with the ability to land on rough airfields. We have all seen that the "dreams" of Russian "deep strike/penetration" not materialize. Just because you have the capabilities on paper to do something (in this case an "air envelopment") does not mean your army can. In fact, they have devolved into using tactics seen in WW2. Their army has always been an artillery army, supplied by rail (rail units are attached to every maneuver BN). You fire tens of thousands of shells a day, move forward as little as yards and then do it again the next day and the next day. Look at all of Russia major conflicts, the first year is always a shitshow (the Russians have been invaded 50 times in their history) and then one of two things happen. They adapt or in cases of invasion of the motherland their weather degrades the attacking forces allowing the Russians time to adapt and push them back.
“the first year is always a shitshow ”. This seems to be the case for most militaries in a long war, when they discover (a) what worked in the exercises doesn’t work as well when the enemy are seriously shooting back, and (b) the enemy forces are just as confused, so they don’t react the way you expected.
So, what about Crimean, Russ-Jap, Finland and Afghan war as minimum?
That last point is absolute BS. Russian climate is as detrimental to a Russian infantryman as it is to any invader. It was Russians who degraded Napoleon, not the weather. The same goes for Germans.
@@robinharwood5044 That's an incorrect generalisation. While there is a learning curve, the sheer incompetence of Russia is in a league of its own.
@@ВладиславВладислав-и4юCrimea required the A team of Britain and France fighting Russia. The Japanese war was being fought away from Russia's main base of strength, while Russia spans out to Asia, most the population, economy and military are in Europe.
The war in Finland happened after Stalin had killed all the competent officers
I have always loved your perspective.
What is strange to me is that IFV all don´t have some simple low power radar just to check if there are copters around. Something like the bofors 40mm would be pretty dangerous to a Hind. But as it is now (as we seen in Ukraine). a chopper can be hovering just a few km away and they troops on the ground not have a clue its even there.
Stingers is all well and good, but they are typically mostly usefull when either its to late, or if you just happen to spot a chopper passing.
For one thing, a radar is a terrific beacon for missiles to home in on or to alert artillery. For another, helos spend a lot of their time hiding behind stuff where radar won’t see them. Then add in maintenance and limited space and weight carrying capacity.
@@TheGreatAmphibian You also have the problem that autocannons lik ea 40mm doesn't have the range to target a helicopter 10km or more away where it can still engage you.
@@Punisher9419 Well, yes. To be honest I didn’t bother reading past the first sentence - I assumed the radar would be used to trigger countermeasures like smoke, etc.
@@TheGreatAmphibian I would say you are totally wrong about that. There are loads of wide band low power radar that would be incredibly hard to use for targeting.
A modern solid state radar is incredibly light, take barley any space and are basically maintenance free. So i would say you are wrong on all points.
Those radar system are already implemented in a host of addon equipment. Archer for example got 3 of them. one for the self defens pod, one artillery radar and one outbound radar.
@@Punisher9419 The attacks is barley ever.. or pretty much non existent on those distances. Most attacks are in 2-3 km distances, and at a top 5. Even if the radar wouldn´t see the helicopter(that it most likely would due to the rotor basically being a radar reflector), it would still the the incoming missiles, being able to engage them, and then also figure out there origin and engage the place of origin..
Also worth saying that the 40mm shells exist in a smart version that prefragment before intercepting the target.
The unguided 70mm missiles we see helicopters (and aircraft) zooming up to launch, then peel off spraying decoy flares. How accurate are they? Can they hit something being aimed at, or are the mostly "spray and pray"?
Russian tactics are very much spray and pray, or massed fires to level cities regardless of collateral damage. The unguided missiles on the Ukrainian side are more due to lack of availability of alternatives; US Forces would rain Hellfires. Lack of air superiority on all sides making air operations risky is also a big factor.
I think it's somewhere in the middle? GPS etc lets you know where you are in relation to your target so not too difficult to calculate a firing solution to dump your rockets into a target grid square. Maybe WWII levels of accuracy?
I wondered that myself until i saw a thermal video of the impacts. Its about the spread and accuracy of cluster munitions. Maybe 200 meter spread. Granted the pilot got everything else right.
They are targeting defensive positions to make the defenders duck, while their infantry advance.
It's like aiming at an barn door with a shot gun loaded with bird shot.
Mystic Shovels❤
your mic is really cool-looking
So…how would Russia’s helicopter forces and tactics fare against a peer adversary, such as NATO? They seem to have a mixed track record in Ukraine.
Ukraine is a peer adversary. They are nato trained and equipped and now have more modern combat experience than any nato army.
@@jsimmons9969 But they still have older or Soviet-era stuff. Not Apache helicopters or A10 ground assault aircraft or, god forbid, something like the AC-130 gunship. Or F15s for that matter. Nor have they spent years using these things in joint exercises with NATO nations.
N a10 and ac130 would be useless on this war. We all see how uneducated u are on the topic by bringing them up
@@bobsemple9341 Is this a lame Z-bot attempt to call those two models useless?
@@surelyyoujokemeinfailure7531 I'm a bot for being smarter then you, jesus. Yes. Both are useless in a peer to peer war.
This is common sense. Why are u struggling?
Helicopters are always high loss assets. In the Vietnam war the U.S. lost 5,607 helicopters. Many air crew Medal of Honor awardees from the Vietnam war were helicopter air crew for good reason. I was a helicopter repairer that spent two years in Iraq and in the two years I spent there I can say that I personally saw four helicopters either written off and bombed in place or packed up in a C5 and sent back to the states because they were damaged beyond our capability to repair them. One of them was actual battle damage, a UH60 struck by an IED an enterprising insurgent had placed on top of a telephone pole because he noticed the helicopters always flew over poles, not between them. Given the intensity of the conflict in Ukraine I’m honestly surprised they’ve only lost 100 so far.
My question: why is losing 100 helicopters in over 100 weeks in a very damn intense combat against a country that had Europe's largest air defense network BEFORE they received western air defenses such a bad result?
This is interesting if true, they already had a tonn of air defense systems before the war eh?
This is interesting if true, they already had a tonn of air defense systems before the war eh?
@@chrisstrebor Yes actually and officially so. More generally the buildup from 2014 means that in 2022 Ukraine had greater military capabilities than all of NATO countries except the United States and Turkey.
the notion that the AFU was weak or 2nd rate- they'd have stomped any army in NATO including the USA, who could not have stomached the casualties.
largest and best equipped army in Europe for the past 2 years.
@@philognosis6409 You Forgot Greece which have Bigger conscript armed force compared to pre war Ukraine
This is similar to the Vietnam war. The US relied on helicopters mostly.
@@gort8203 UA ? or do you mean RU ?
Russia uses helicopter as manpad absorbers.
cry
@@lt.manch1016Manpad absorber is the best use of helicopters.
Cope
Exactly, just as Russian infantry serve as a mechanism to drain the enemy of small arms ammunition, Russian helicopters appear to be designed to attrite western manpads
@@sweetio Might be the Russians who have to resort to coping strategies.
your speaking tempo is native level speed, you must have to speak English at work or something because if anything you are speaking quickly even for natives. As someone who can speak no foreign languages I think this is very impressive
Why would they? They've only lost 5% of them. Unless they became ineffective.
I'd like to know more about the ex - Soviet chopper with contra-rotating props, and why this is not more common, please.
the doctrine sounds a lot like the german blitzing, where their mechanized troops tried to penetrate as deep as possible
Because all modern land doctrine derives from WWI, in which the use of already relatively modern but not yet mobile, artillery led to positional stalemate. We can trace if not whole evolution here but at least one of the critical points:
WWI:
1. Creating operational stalemate through the use of concentrated artillery fire against attacking forces. Infantry also gained increased resilience through the widespread introduction of automatic weapons (machine guns).
2. As a response to this: attempts at even greater concentration of firepower, but not in the form of more or less dispersed means of offense and defense, but by creating localized points of stress in the offense with tanks, hand machine guns, and special assault squads.
WWII:
1. Actual development of solutions to positional stalemate in WWI. Development of not separate local means, but whole military doctrines based on these means.
2. The final transformation of positional warfare into "motor warfare". Advantage is given to those units that have increased mobility while maintaining firepower relative to more "traditional" types of army units. Mechanization of infantry and artillery: infantry carriers and various types of self-propelled platforms for artillery.
Post WWII:
1. An attempt at greater interaction between air power and infantry. Not only in terms of coordinating strikes, but also in giving infantry even greater mobility while maintaining both strike and defensive capabilities.
2. Even greater development of technical means of coordination and control of troops. Greater reduce response between an event and the need to react to that event.
the way I always thought of late-cold war Soviet/Russian choppers is that they are a flying BMP
Russia has always built very good helicopters , It's kind of a conundrum They're so vulnerable to shoulder fired weapons But at the same time.
Their ability to fly low and hug the train Protects them from more robust surface air missiles And radar systems , Something that there fixed wing aircraft are highly vulnerable to Particularly if those missiles are supplied by nato . The k a fifty two the only helicopter with an ejection seat , Brilliant
I think that the ka 50 has an ejection seat too.
so your Bismarck from bo time gaming right?
Yes, he is.
How is this even a question? Helicopters are extremely useful and versatile in both civilian and military sectors. Why does Russia still use computers? Why does Russia still use drones? Why do Russians still eat food? We can ask stupid questions all day.
...it is a valid question, because what it actually means is
"How necessary is the speed and responsiveness of helicopter-based fires to the Russian way of war, and for what reasons have cheaper and less vulnerable systems been unable to fulfill the same role?"
While helicopters are generally useful for militaries, some armies have more or less focus on them. South Korea, for instance, has a more defensive doctrine, so they stress land-based artillery more than attack helicopters. They still have the copters, but the war they'd need to fight requires fewer of them.
You use what you got and you make it work.
A bit of an odd title for the video, a few minutes in you list all the roles helicopters are capable of fulfilling. So why would they stop using them? Other than that minor complaint another good video. 👍
Great video and I agree when you see a good depiction of mid, late cold war the soviets descend on Nato with para troops of both the plan e and helicopter verity... Which I did not know the fine details of that... also it can be argued operational art dates back to how napoleon ran his empire's miltary if not to him.
. . . are you trying to tell that RU learned from Napoleon ?
One big problem, as in Afghanistan, MANPADS have mostly neutralized Russian frontline helicopter operations. That is why we mostly only see helicopters lobbing unguided rockets from far behind the frontlines. Air assault operations are almost unknown since Hostomel. The entire Russian doctrine for helicopter operations has been turned on its head. In addition, as we have seen recently Russian helicopter bases near the frontlines are susceptible to ATACM strikes. Pulling these bases back out of range further decreases the effectiveness of helicopter support operations. I also question how much of their stated air fleet, like much of the rest of their air forces, are actually operational. For example, I have seen reports that half of their KA-52s have been destroyed. Like the rest of the Russian military, their helicopter fleet is likely to have severe maintenance issues. The Mi-8 and MI-24 is old and parts availability may be an issue.
Manpads didn’t neutralize helicopters. They accounted for a small percentage of helicopter losses in Afghanistan. In fact, the war was halfway over by the time manpads came into the country. They certainly changed things. But helicopters were still completely vital to the Soviets in Afghanistan even with stingers around
MANPADS were a bitch but they didn't impact helicopters in afghanistan nearly as bad as FPV drones have AFVs in ukraine. And there wasn't a single front in afghanistan, helicopters were vital to countering insurgencies. Their last afghanistan operation, Magistral, heavily relied on helicopter infantry insertion on strategic heights.
Hostomel has failed because the logistic train from belarus got mauled, they underappreciated the force needed to escort it basically running trucks naked. Everything after that is pure speculation like with them running out of missiles every month.
At the begining of the war there was this Ukrainian oligarch getting arrested for treason and I recall part of the accusation was, that one of his factories produced vital parts of Russian helicopters and he kept delivering after the war started. I would really like to know, whether they run on their last set of spares or if they found substitutes.
@@brunsheimmasterbaitwilfrie2811 That would probably be Motor-sich that produced helicopter turbines but russians have long since pulled that back to Klimov plant which is the original developer of engines in question. In 2014 actually.
@@Klovaneer Thx!
In the mid 1980's the West changed doctrine completely. They went towards using NGO's, financial systems, sanctions, political/military coups, assassinations, large drones, special forces and propaganda to achieve their goals. This approach reduced military casualties and can almost completely hidden from their citizens. The last European/US/NATO Divisional level exercise was OP Lionheart in 1984. Unfortunately this change of approach has led to the absolute atrophy of Western Militaries (excluding USA), to the extent that most of the EU nations don't have Armies, but rather, very small boutique militaries. If it came to a conventional conflict RIGHT NOW today, Russia would crush Europe completely. It would be a humiliating defeat.
Lucky for Europe, it's clear that Russia does not want war with Europe.
That's pretty laughable. There is a conventional conflict going on right now, and Russia can't even quickly take Ukraine quickly, without NATO even being truly serious about supplying weapons, let alone troops. And the former WARSAW Pact countries that are now part of NATO aren't the slackers the western half of NATO is. Nor are the Fins or Swedes. And if you back up the determination of those countries to not ever again be under the Russian boot, with the air might of modern NATO planes, it would not be pretty for Russia. Which is why Russia doesn't want a war in Europe. It isn't the USSR. It's a country trying to pretend it is still as might as the USSR, without the industrial or economic capacity to be such.
1)Вертолеты вооружены ракетами на 15 км, изделие 305 ЛМУР там теле наведение, чтобы в форточку залетало
2)Вертолеты вооружены вихрями и атаками для борьбы с тяжелой техникой, что мы увидели в огромном количестве во время украинского "контрнаступления"
3)Вертолеты работают как средство поражения врага по территории и как активная поддержка пехоты, например при штурме городов
4)современные ка52, ка52м, ми28 вооружены бортовыми системами для борьбы с пво врага, в сети хватает роликов, как ракеты пзрк пролетают мимо вертолетов
5)Вертолеты учувствуют в боях против дронов. Ми 28 сбивали беспилотники на подлете к Москве, видео тоже есть, вертолеты уничтожают безэкипажные катера на Черном море, роликов тоже полно
6)Вертолеты занимаются эвакуацией летчиков, или доставкой спецназа
7)вертолеты - дешевле самолетов, как в производстве, так и в обслуживании
In 2020 Finnish Defence Forces released a conscript training video where an invading nation tries a Hostomel like airfield capture operation.
However this was not at all a trick they just recently figured out. Static defences had already been placed on some airfields to fire at landing aircraft since late 1960s.
It seems to me that helicopters are very easily defeated with drone missiles, and anti-aircraft missiles.
Russia is the only country in the world to equip helicopters with manpad missile suppression system, extremely efficient
Proper deployment of Helicopters means they must show up unexpectedly. Of course, that's a basic tenet of war fighting: If you can surprise your opponent, that's half the battle.
Very helpful thank you!
Helicopters are the close air support of the spearheads of any assault. They have to prepare the advance and clear those streets cause you need to keep the speed and momentum on your side.
Have you ever seen a column of cars on a red light ? If everyone slows starts to drive when the red light turns into green you are much faster than watching on the brake lights of the car just in front of you.
No one should be able to stop the spearhead to keep that rolling and all the following units too. That is the key point in any breakthrough deep penetration attack which Helicopters can provide and jets just rather limited cause they are flying too fast to recognice and identify targets.
Nice, thank you! Well, the Soviet/Russian doctrine is nothing new. The German Wehrmacht had similar concepts. The Allies in the WW2 wanted to implement these concepts on the D-Day and later on in the air landing operation in Holland... Helicopters became basically a replacement for the ground-attack planes from the WW2 like IL-2 or Ju-87 (Stuka).
As for the "deep operations" in Ukraine, you see that the lack of training, mass incompetence and lack of resources on a strategic level on the Russian side limited the helicopters to a very shy combat machine firing from large distances and never crossing the front line. Likely, nobody can see now "cavalry charges" made deep into the Ukrainian territory.
One detail, Chris... as far as I know it's "facilitate", not "faciliate".
According to Google Translate, Germany does not use the word "fazilitieren", but "fazilitierung" apparently does exist.
"Fazilitieren" reminds me of the old german aristocrats who spoke "Kauderwelsch" (a mixture of French and German) instead of today's widespread Denglish. It wouldn't be used by a radio speaker or TV moderator.
@@gviehmann Ah, with a z. Makes more sense!
"Mixture of French and German and Denglish" is a pretty apt description of my own language btw ;)
I thought using loads of helicopters was 'strong country syndrome.'
We use choppers because we can.
Russia doesn't smash the wall, she flattens it.
Russia trips on its own shoelaces.
I'm amazed these machines can even buzz around like this. Relatively slow, noisy clattering things, ready to be shredded by AAA and SAMs. Would be awesome to see a deep dive into how well Mi28 and KA-50 have performed in real combat. No doubt countries with large helicopter fleets are watching very closely.
It is cute seeing how a western guy tries to understand and to put logic behind Russian mentality and actions. The short answer is "because they have them". Russia is using helicopters because it has them. Right now they'd prefer to have extra btr3 s rather than helicopter but if they have them they will use them. Same reason they use anything that will perceivebly give them any edge, 80 yr old tanks or troop transports, Chinese bikes and so on. Pretty much the only time they used the copters the way it was supposed to was in the first month of the invasion. There is no 4d chess here at play, there is no doctrinal or otherwise reason. But yeah, I always have fun listening to western guys trying to shape Russian decisions or actions through some logical or rational lense.
Helicopters, and tanks, won’t be discontinued until a clear and obvious replacement becomes available. Battleships weren’t phased out because they could be sunk, they were phased out because for the same raw materials and fewer crew you could build an aircraft carrier and destroyer bs just a battleship. I don’t think helicopters will be phased out until human bodies no longer need to be transported in and out of the battlefield.
The US has always focused on precision, from our close air support to our artillery (traditional and missiles). That is not the case with the Soviets. Artillery was almost always against targets of mass and the Soviets did not put much of an emphasis on precision air support. [Now I am wondering if the Soviets even did close air support with fixed wing aircraft - with teh exception of the Su-25.] In many ways, Soviet (and now Russian) helicopters served the same purpose as the German Stukas in providing close and immediate infantry (or mechanized) fire support during advances.
Stukas provided tactical bombing support, not close air support. The Ju 87 wasn't even ideally suited for the latter role. Russian use of (attack) helicopters is much more akin to the use of the IL-2 ground attack aircraft by the Soviet air force during WW2. See Chris's video about that subject which he posted recently.
Russia keeps using helicopters because only helicopters can do helicopter things. They are an incredibly useful and flexible asset with unique abilities.
It's not the helicopters' fault that Russia has extremely poor doctrine and absolute lack of concern for loss of life and materiel.
Post WWII, the West returned to its roots and built up anti-insurgent, colonialist military forces. Russia never abandoned its history and continued to develop and field armies fit for mass-scale land battles
I don’t think that is correct. The western forces still have what’s required to fight a land war and to do other missions as required.
Now there may be a case to say a large land war was not expected as nobody thought a full scale invasion of a country in Europe would happen.
Not doing particularly well.
Let’s not forget KA-52’s proficient usage of ATGMs against Ukrainian armour has been significantly especially last summer and it’s still used allot today. another thing is the cruise missile Izdeliye 305 used every day against targets in Ukraine
Ummmmm... Pretty much every army in the world use helicopters, for the same reasons. Don't see anything special or different to any army...
Americans used them in every invasion: Afghanistan, Iraq, Vietnam... In most of them against an opponent who doesn't have any meaningful air defense...
Something that you're not covering in your video is the attacks on the airbases.
In other words .. ATACMS has entered the chat.
4:09 Mi-4 Hound?
I haven’t watched yet, but I think I know the answer. Is it because choppers are cool? I think choppers are pretty cool.
Side note, whenever I look at the cockpit of a Mi-8 I always think “hmm, is there anyway we can get more switches in here? I feel like we need more switches.”
No matter the cope, we all saw Russia change its helicopter doctrine to a way more successful one. From 2023 on, theyve been losing multitudes less down to single digits per month now.
They used their choppers to crush the Ukrainian armored counter offensive so bad Ukraine gave up on using leopards after losing 30% of their whole stockpile in a few days.
Keep coping like its Berlin 45'🤦
They aren’t losing them anymore because they aren’t flying aggressive sorties you clown. Hiding behind the horizon, at treetop level, waiting for the enemy to come to you isn’t something to brag about. Their rotary wing fleet has been completely defanged, and is unable to provide any meaningful support for the constant failed attacks the Russians have made every other week, for the last year.
Vkery very great analysis.
What a ridiculous title. As if other powers wouldn’t use helicopters the same way. How many helicopters did the USA lose in Vietnam? 5600+
That was 49-69 years ago, depending on when you're talking about
@@dapeach06 why does that matter? Armies still use artillery. There’s no substitute for a helicopter. If there was nobody would buy helicopters.
He is getting desperate for views i guess
@@DCresident123 maybe. I’m waiting for the next title, why Russia can’t break its dependency on bullets.
@@jeffhedrich3551 nah it will be shovels lol
size and area of the frontline
Soviet doctrine, strategy, and tactics: HULK SMASH
Russian doctrine, strategy, and tactics: same but drunk