as the saying goes, there's no such thing as a free lunch. but for many nations a dedicated, purpose designed gunship isn't a viable option so they have to find a compromise.
Western version of a Mil-24 'Hind' gunship based on Puma or 'SeaKing helicopters?
- Thread starter Fuzzy Dunlop
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RamscoopRaider
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Note experience with those is exactly why the US chose to build a dedicated gunship in the first place. If your gunship and transport share the same fuselage design, then all things being equal your gunship will be slower as it is carrying external munitions to add to drag, making the transports and the mission as a whole have to slow down. Hence why the US built the narrow fuselage gunships so that when carrying a full load of munitions they would still be as fast as the transports that used the same engine. The US ran into that problem because due to weight issues transporting troops on a helicopter loaded down with munitions reduced range compared to splitting the munitions and troops onto separate aircraft, then ran into the drag issue
I think the Mi 24 just doesn’t fit into the modern paradigm. To invent a parallel, all western helicopters are basically trucks or tanks. Some are quite heavily armed trucks, but still trucks. The Soviet ‘truck’ helicopters are the Mi 8/17 range which comes in all flavours from completely civilian up to basically the same weapons packages as the Mi 24 but with a ‘cargo’ hull. The ‘tank’ helicopters are the Mi 28 & Ka 50.
The Mi 24 is a sort of IFV helicopter that is neither. Just as an IFV is a terrible truck and a very questionable tank, the Mi 24 is not a good substitute at all for transport helicopters and a less than perfect substitute for a pure gunship. But for specific purposes, it’s the perfect tool. However those purposes are so specific I’m not sure why anyone would buy Mi 24 these days unless they either have a legacy force to reinforce, or get a screaming good deal on them from the Russians.
The Mi 24 is a sort of IFV helicopter that is neither. Just as an IFV is a terrible truck and a very questionable tank, the Mi 24 is not a good substitute at all for transport helicopters and a less than perfect substitute for a pure gunship. But for specific purposes, it’s the perfect tool. However those purposes are so specific I’m not sure why anyone would buy Mi 24 these days unless they either have a legacy force to reinforce, or get a screaming good deal on them from the Russians.
A multi roll aircraft is never going to be as good at anything as two single roll aircraft. So unless you have a limited budget you are better with two dedicated aircraft.
I had a friend that flew gunships Hueys in Vietnam, he was shot down more then once. He was a FIRM believer in a dedicated gunship design Seperate from the transport design. (Feel free to share components such as engine and such).
As cool looking as the Hind is it is neither a great transport nor a great gunship. It is a great movie helicopter how ever
I had a friend that flew gunships Hueys in Vietnam, he was shot down more then once. He was a FIRM believer in a dedicated gunship design Seperate from the transport design. (Feel free to share components such as engine and such).
As cool looking as the Hind is it is neither a great transport nor a great gunship. It is a great movie helicopter how ever
The Mi-28 retains a small compartment that can carry three people. This is not meant to be used for assault troops, but for evacuation and to assist in in deployments to temporary bases.
afaik, no one here is disputing this statement. this is more of a "how do we do this stupid thing in a smart way" kind of thread
Which is A) much more expensive and B) much more complicated, the us can do it but considering the size of the assaults the ussr was planing on the first day of the war, makeing shure to limit complexity and required turn around time was more important then getting the most out a the airframe for a particular role.
And yet evey nation on earth is continuing to build and upgrade ifvs, because they provide a lot of fire power and mobility organically to infrantry units, gust like mi-24, if anything there getting more popular as wars that need big tank battles drindals these days go down and wars focusing on infrantry battles gos up. Whether that means the mi-24 is still a good idea ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ but russia at lest seems to be in zero hery to change or get rid of them like they are whith there missiles, airforce, or armord corps.
I hate to think what any troops in the back would have to say about those aerobatics, or what they'd do to the pilots when they got back on the ground.
It is far cheaper to operate a fleet of 20 attack helicopters and 80 transport helicopters than 100 assault helicopters because attack helicopters are so enormously expensive to operate. The 80 dedicated transports would also have two to three times the carrying capacity of 100 assault helicopters with tiny cabins. The Soviets had more than 20,000 Mi-7 and Mi-17 transports compared to about 2,000 Mi-24 attack helicopters and were planning brigade-sized air assaults with multiple waves, including much larger transports like Mi-26s carrying armored vehicles. Additionally, the Soviets never planned to use the transport capabilities of the Mi-24 and had no real intention of doing so after the initial design was found satisfactory for the attack role. The “airborne IFV” concept was never seriously considered for practical use because of the kind of mission profile attack helicopters would have to fly.
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Except the Soviets in Afghanistan really quickly stopped doing this. Their workhorse transports were the Mi-8 and Mi-17, and the Mi-24 was almost entirely used as a dedicated gunship that could occasionally drop off or pick up small sections of troops.
There's a reason the Soviets spent the '80s developing the Mi-28 and Ka-50 dedicated attack helicopters, and it wasn't because the Hind was so wildly successful at both transport and gunship roles.
The 70s and 80s were a time of great experimentation. I remember reading a (public domain) NATO assessment, which said the -24 would carry AT missile teams that would be dropped before the 24 attacked, to do a 2-prong AT attack. Then they'd swing around and pick them up...
Never said it was,the point is that it can do both, when you have to do both it makes operations a lot easier if you only need one helicopter as seen by the fact that neither of those helicopters where ment to replace the mi-24.
But that’s the thing, IFVs are used for their own very specific purposes. Any army proposing to use IFVs as a general substitute for trucks would be a laughing stock. Some armies do use them instead of tanks, but that’s because they are either too poor to afford tanks or don’t need the firepower. IFVs properly belong in a balanced force, next to tanks and in front of a fleet of trucks.
The analogy also isn’t perfect because an upgunned transport chopper can fulfil a big chunk of the firepower component which a truck cannot.
The Mi-24 is a bit of an odd beast and while it makes for a perfectly decent gunship, and is presumably much cheaper than the Ka 50 / Mi 28 or western equivalents, in retrospect they would probably have been better off stripping out even more of the transport features. Something like a supersized Cobra with the same systems as the Mi 8/17 to operate alongside them.
I think it’s notable that both the later sov/Russian designs and the Sikorsky equivalent ended up in basically the same place - a big beefy pure gunship with a few nooks and crannies in the fuselage that can be used to stuff things into, but they are not transports any more than the Merkava is an APC/IFV.