Ukraine's Unmanned Systems Forces, the branch of the Ukrainian military built specifically around drone warfare, said operators from the Rarog unit struck a Russian Mi-28 attack helicopter with a FPV (first-person-view) drone, a small remote-controlled aircraft flown by an operator

Honestly these russian heli pilots seem clueless…

Incredibly impressive infantry work and piloting by these FPV pilots regardless!

  • supersquirrel@sopuli.xyzOP
    7·
    27 days ago

    Yeah the Mi-28 is a vaporware AH-64 copy, the radar is mast mounted and if it worked it should have been trivially easy to detect the drone.

    So pilots were untrained and pushed to point of total exhaustion, they were flying overly predictable routes, they had no combined arms coordination or the equipment didn’t actually work. I am betting the issue was all of these problems.

    Maybe on the AH-1Z the AN/APG radar might have a blindspot like this but why the hell would you fly such a maneuverable aircraft so predictably and slowly around threats?

    edit it is possible the radar wasn’t mounted but one of the reasons AH-64s fly in pairs is data sharing is trivial between the AH-64 helicopters, so only one helicopter needs to carry the radar. Which brings us back to my main point, maybe russia would have liked to ideally field their Mi-28s this way but they simply physically cannot because of attrition, loss of personnel and equipment, inability to maintain and upgrade equipment and decaying institutional competence. It is the same with the deployment of main battle tanks, in US armored doctrine there is no unit of one main battle tank, they work in pairs at a minimum like rooks on a chess board.

    Note: The thing that stopped the Ukrainian counter offensive in Kursk was russia’s attack helicopters, no doubt drones play a massive role now but it is notable that what served as the backstop against a Ukrainian armored push is now collapsing in front of our very eyes. It sure makes one wonder about how badly some leopards, a handful of abrams, lynxes/mechanized infantry, bohdanas and RCH-155s all working together inside a massive drone swarm could fuck up russia right now…

    • tal@lemmy.todayEnglish
      2·
      27 days ago

      Maybe on the AH-1Z the AN/APG radar might have a blindspot like this

      Yeah, I was wondering about a rear blind spot, but it lools like a clear line of sight to the drone avoiding the tail rotor on the Mi-28NM, so I’d think that they could deal with it.

      1000009408

      And I imagine that they may also be able to filter out the effect of the blades.

      Plus, I don’t know what doctrine is on this, but on a helicopter, which can fly sideways, I’d imagine that you could do the aerial equivalent of what submarines do.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baffles_(submarine)

      The baffles is the area in the water directly behind a submarine or ship through which a hull-mounted sonar cannot hear. This blind spot is caused by the need to insulate the sonar array, commonly mounted near the bow, from the noise of the vessel’s machinery.

      Clearing the baffle area

      A submarine tracking another submarine can take advantage of its target’s baffles to follow at a close distance without being detected. Periodically, a submarine will perform a maneuver called clearing the baffles, in which the boat will turn left or right far enough to listen with the forward array sonar for a few minutes in the area that was previously blocked by the baffles. Good tactics require a submarine to clear baffles at irregular intervals and in different directions so that a pursuing submarine cannot predict when and how the next baffle-clearing maneuver will be made. When a submarine clears its baffles, a pursuing submarine must take measures to avoid detection by, or worse, collision with, the submarine ahead.

      Speaking of submarine tactics, it’s possible that they normally operate with active sensors like radar off, to not make it obvious that there’s a helicopter coming to Ukraine. No idea what the norm is there.

      • supersquirrel@sopuli.xyzOP
        3·
        27 days ago

        Flying low, slow and straight like this anywhere near the frontline while not under/amid a bubble of friendly assets, drones and reconnaisance elements feels equivalent to me of strolling into a dark warehouse in the showdown of a 90s action movie armed to the teeth with a submachine gun but never bother to looking behind you and walking slowly straight ahead like an NPC guard. The hero only needs a metal pipe to ambush you from behind with to win in that scenario.

        There is no excuse for the Mi-28, which should be being used for short range mass air defense, operating without a fixed wing high flying reconnasaince drone monitoring from above that could watch the “six” of the helicopter.

        Just the rotarwash alone could tumble a drone like this out of the air, if the helicopter was flying in arcing motions where the downwash is directed in a rather unpredictable way (along with pilots training to specifically watch their rear view mirror when flying slow like a driver watching out for someone following them).

        I think this is a demonstration of just how highly sophisticated and capable Ukrainian infantry & drone fpv pilots are operating with combined arms support. It takes a lot of work, planning, and rolling the dice until the moment happens to make a moment like this connect, but still flying with this kind of doctrine with an attack helicopter just seems incredibly wasteful and dumb.