Japan is retiring its entire fleet of attack helicopters to replace them with drones
Are they retarded... or geniuses?
Japan is retiring its entire fleet of attack helicopters to replace them with drones. Are they retarded... or geniuses?
Japan is retiring its entire fleet of attack helicopters to replace them with drones
Are they retarded... or geniuses?
Q. why aren't quad drones just smaller helicopters?
If they're better then why aren't helicopters giant quad drones?
It's about the different sizes of the engines. Small electric motors are more efficient so you can put more on a drone and make it easier to steer. At the size of a helicopter four rotors would be inefficient, electric or not.
Not only that - quad rotors are inherently less efficient than a single rotor. Single large fan can push more air for the same amount of energy than 4 smaller ones and helicopters’s varying-pitch propeller mechanism is a more efficient solution, because it takes more energy to slow down / speed up propellers than keeping the motor and propeller at a constant speed.
why did they use a quadcopter to get the Sikorsky prize?
at what size/weight does an electric battery become impractical and better off switching to a gas engine instead?
I couldn't give you any actual values for size/weight especially because that's a number which is changing regularly due to battery advancement. There are other concerns though, one example being that an electric motor large enough to provide lift to a helicopter that was the size of say a Chinook is going to create an extremely strong magnetic field. Which is really hard to design an aircraft around because you don't want it fucking with your electronics.
Quadcopters exist because they're easy mode for the flight controller programming.
Anything high-performance is going to use a single rotor: see FLIR's Black Hornet or Anduril's Ghost 4.
The same is true of hydrocarbons. Anything smaller than 20lb benefits from electrical motors being compact. If larger, the higher power density of hydrocarbons outpaces the larger engine scale.
Why not.
Attack helicopters are expensive as fuck and have been functioning as expensive BVR drones for over a decade.
They're doing it because they don't have enough pilots
Doubt. They have had no problems with getting pilots for their sizable fighter fleet who gets plenty of flight hours. They also have a ton of utility copters and no issues getting pilots for those.
One of they stated reasons for moving away from attack helicopters is Japan says their current attack helicopters fleet requires ~1000 personnel to keep flying. A fleet of UAVs will require far fewer people to keep in service.
Depend on what kind of drone they will use.
They had already planned to ditch their ancient Cobras without replacement and they Apache fleet is miniscule. They also have named a successor. It's not really that big a thing, and it's not set in stone.
Sorry. I meant to say they HAVEN'T named a successor. Until then, it's just a plan.
These naggers are still using AH-1s right?
Anyway, japan will never be in a situation where combat helicopters would be useful. Long range armed stealth drones are better for them.
Vipers and Venoms are quite nice choppers homosexual.
Suck on your Hinds dick
Attack helicopters are hardly critical for any military, and probably don't suit the kind of warfare japan expects to fight.
They're kind of dumb weapons tbh, their whole purpose is to go forward and destroy more things than they are worth. Drones are much more versatile.
>their whole purpose is to go forward and destroy more things than they are worth
>destroy more things than they are worth
yep thats literally every weapon ever
>anon sees attack helicopters shot down in Ukraine while doing dumb rocket runs 1 km away from an enemy unit with MANPADS
>he then concludes all attack helicopters are useless
Many such cases sadly. He honestly probably doesn't know that the Apache, when it's equipped with a radar on its mast, can detect every single tank in a battalion from behind a hill then begin lobbing JAGMs at it from behind cover.
If the radar can see you, you can see the radar. If you can see the radar, you can shoot a missile at it, just like the helicopter can shoot an ATGM at you. Except the helicopter is a massively expensive, thin skinned flying object that will easily be destroyed entirely if damaged, while the AFV is comparably cheap, heavily armored, equipped with APS and often survives hits.
None of this consider the fact that a drone can do basically the same as a helicopter, but it is much cheaper.
Yeah but see, the helicopter doesn't expose its entire frame while doing this. The radar is mounted above the rotors, so from your perspective on the other side of a hill it'll look like pic related. You aren't getting a MANPADS or gun hit on it. It's too small of a target.
Eh, I'd personally go even lower since they probably weren't concerned about timely interception and SM-6 can do intercepts at longer ranges. Maybe 1-1.2 per missile.
As for the drones being shot down I don't think we're actually going to get information on that since that information feels like it'd give away the low RCS engagement capability of SM-2. I dunno anon all I'm saying is that it's more likely that maybe 12-15 interceptors were used in the engagement than 18+. Don't want to encourage the shills.
Even if they only used 5 i'd still bet the $10m on those interceptors is more than the Houthi's spent on the entire attack.
I doubt they spent much at all considering the missiles and drones were likely express posted from Iran. I'm curious how much Iran spent on the manufacture, training and shipment though. No joke.
>you can see the radar
The problem with these thoughts in modern day conflict is datalink. Every modern western aircraft shares so much information that you can comfortably use something like a drone to loiter and collect information and spread that around a hundred units easily. That information is then passed to the Apache hiding behind a mountain with a pilot who's getting a hard on just thinking about bragging about how many he's about to kill.
There's no point in putting all your eggs in one basket anymore. The aircraft carrying all the weapons doesn't need to see the target. There are a hundred and one different ways he can send a big fucking explosive towards you when his own instruments can't even detect you.
No it's not, SM-2 for example that USS Carney fired at some cruise missiles and drones the other day. Each SM-2 is $2m a pop and they fired at LEAST 18 and probably more than that. There is no way in hell those Houthi rockets were more than $2m each.
Most missile interceptors cost more than the missile they're intercepting. The idea being you're avoiding the cost of destruction and loss of life if that missile werent intercepted.
https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/navy-ships/a45617466/us-destroyer-downs-drones-cruise-missiles-over-red-sea/
>Early reports stated that Carney shot down three cruise missiles and eight drones; those numbers were revised upward on Monday to four cruise missiles and 15 drones. Carney used both SM-2 surface-to-air missiles and its 5-inch gun to shoot the craft down.
If you have a source on exactly how many missiles were used I'd like to see it.
Fine, assuming they managed to get within range and shoot EVERY drone with the 5" gun, that's still ~8 SM-2s for the 4 cruise missiles (you basically never fire a single interceptor for a missile)
Just think of a helicopter as a very expensive light skinned truck with 16 ATGMs on board. It's just as vulnerable, but similarly concealable for ambushes. The thing that makes a helicopter worthwhile is being able to behave more or less identically to a ground vehicle in application, hiding, spotting, engaging, but with the the bonus advantage of being able to fly over obstacles making it fast as fuck to get from place to place. It's an ideal QRF or interdiction platform vs any kind of ground vehicle, without some of the limitations in sustained ground visibility or engagement envelopes of a fixed wing aircraft or drone.
Most but not all, while being generally more vulnerable to ECM and every type of air defense. VTOL drones would be more directly comparable, be they tiltrotor, tailsitter, or multirotor.
Probably had to do with available torque limiting tip speed, meaning they needed multiple smaller rotors to end up with enough total lift. Lighter disc loading is still more efficient for any given power, which means multi rotor will still be less efficient, but they had many other constraints to consider.
It's pretty terrifying. Japan operating a fleet of drones capable of replacing attack helicopters is fucking terrifying.
Is fighting China the only conflict Japan thinks about? I know there have been higher level political grumblings over the past decade regarding the military being "Self-Defense Forces", but is that still something they're bothered by? Especially now China is more prone to throwing it's weight around? Because the only other conflicts they would be involved in would just be getting shot at by tribesmen in some desert hell.
I guess what I'm saying, OP, is I have no fucking idea, but the Japache's should have Subaru badges on them, that I do know.
Yes. Japan does not plan on fighting any offensive wars basically ever. There was a ton of grumbling that they even sent support to the sandbox and they were almost strictly humanitarian in nature.
They're going to give them all to Taiwan.
Japan will then double down on air superiority and having over 9000 armed drones to compensate.
Smart. Bayraktar-sized drones can do most of the things a helicopter can do, some things much better, and are way less ressource intensive in every way.
>Everything is becoming dystopian
>doesn't do it the italian way, aka use drone launching queen bee attack helicopters
So much for the famed asian creativity
Because they don't want to pay to train pilots or maintain the system.
Japan has a lot of hills etc right? Perfect helicopter areas
do attack helicopters have a role in peer conflict or not? simple as.
Attack helicopters are becoming sexually undesirable now?!
FFS I don't want to identify as a drone. 🙁
They never deploy their military anywhere and it's strictly a defense force so for them it makes sense to replace something with huge maintenance and training costs with something cheap that will fill the same role.
For nations that constantly invade 3rd world shitholes it's worth keeping attack choppers around because they are extremely effective against insurgencies and unconventional forces.
>Are they retarded... or geniuses?
Option 3: Fiscally responsible, aware of their own insignificance and playing on the fact that the US are suckers and will pick up the slack if needed.
There's nothing wrong with attack helicopters per se. If you already have them it's fine to keep them. But if you're starting from a blank slate drones are lower maintenance, longer loiter, and cheaper with the same payloads.
Attack helis are expected to die like flies in a peer war so if you're casualty-concerned drones save costs there too.
Very different doctrine between the use of a drone whether it's large like a reaper or small like a quadcopter and the use of an attack helicopter. They fulfil different roles entirely but admittedly, not everyone needs attack helicopters but practically everyone requires drones of some kind.
I would start cutting critical personnel roles too if I was in charge of planning for a population that is going to halve in a few decades. Everyone in east asia should be getting used to drones and AI.