Attack helicopters-Are they still useful?

Attack helicopters such as the Apache have proven their worth in America's Middle Eastern wars. However, will they still be useful in a future in which large tank battles are rare and man portable SAMs can knock them out of the sky? Everyone knows what happened in Mogadishu. Imagine that in a non-enclosed space and with actual SAMs, not RPGs. Does the attack helicopter have a future in war between well armed conventional opponents?

When Apache and other newest western Attack helicopters were designed, they knew that they would have to go against Shilkas (ZSU-23-4) and Kub (SA-6) coupled with even more modern soviet lowlevel airdefence systems, so the changing times were they now mostly encounter insurgents with limited AD, i'd say they are still rather usefull.

Of course they are. Attack helos are very versital. Excellent deployed against light armour and the type weapons insurgents and terrorist employ. Which would you rather have for your air support?..AH-64 or Wz-9????

US Army AH-64 Apache


PLA Wz-9

Which would you rather have for your air support?..AH-64 or Wz-9????

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Tiger Offcourse

In my opinion, attack helicopters are lousy fighting vehicles. They won't have a
bright future.

They are slow, much slower than a bomber such as A-10, they can hardly
overturn a Stinger or SA-6
they are noisy and not stealthy at all, make them easy to detect
they fly low, make them easy to attack
they are extremely vulnerable, can be brought down by small arms, mortars, and SAM

Attack helicopters are much harder to handle than regular attack bombers
Attack helos carry much less armos than a regular bomber, like A-10, and they
require two crews instead of one in A-10. They also have a much less combat range.

Attack helos can be very expensive, an Apache can cost twice than a A-10. One Apache probably can buy 5 Su-24.

Overall I think attack helos will only be valuable if used in places where the terriain
will give helo lots of opportunity to hide and then jump up to attack. They can be
very effective in some gorrison wars fighting those poor armed militias, insurgents and terrorists, but against a regular army equipped with lots of low attitude SAMs, they will be shot down like sparrows.

Transport helicopters, on the other hand, will still have a role.

@netspider

attack helicopters are not easy to shot down, today they have a very effective automatic flare system, the most apaches lost in iraq simply has dust in their engines, and they are not easy detectable by radar, no, they are very hard to detect by radar because they fly so low, and they are not noisy but very quiet :coffee:

an A-10 can never give the level of support a modern helo can give, hide behind anything, bring the radar over the tree you are hiding , go higher ,fire your missiles and then hide again

I'd take the ah-64 longbow any day over a w-9. The wz-9 has very limited armour protection(seriously, half it's cockpit is glass!), and it's weapon's load/variety is limited by the "stubs" it uses to hold weapons.It also lacks decent countermeasures, though i heard isreal was offering such an upgrade.

i think modern attack helicopters hold their value. As of now, ive never heard of an attacker capable of firing hellfires. also, slower helicopters can maintain patrols over regions. but they still are vulnerable to MANPADS, which is why countermeasures and armor continue to evolve.

These are all things I had never thought of before. Thanks,

Wouldn't an attack helo's usefulness be drastically diminished when the force it is fighting for does not have control of the air? I don't know how most militaries protect the choppers but it would seem they would need some if they were going into an area where they were threatened by enemy fighters.

So I think we can make this generalization: For guerilla war, urban war, war in a boxed in enviroment such as the mountains and against light armour the helo is the better choice. For major tank battles, like the never-fought NATO vs. Warsaw Pact battle, planes like the A-10 are the better choice.

In my opinion, attack helicopters are lousy fighting vehicles. They won't have a
bright future

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This type of thinking is ridicilous. Why do you think that many western nations have spend millions to developt a weaponsystem that in your obinion wouldn't have a change in modern warfare? As i said before, Apache and tiger (for example) are both designed to go against heavy soviet lowlevel airdefence. Then how do you justify your claims that they are now useless when no country in the world cannot no longer provide same calibre AD network? Remember that most modern attack helicopters have been designed after the development of, lets say A-10.

Well, in any of these hypothetical situations where big countries with big militaries go at it, such as the ones you mentioned, I think that the attack helicopter's role would still be very important, if not more because on the modern tank battlefield, the scariest thing you can encounter is an attack helicopter, which really isn't an encounter unless you classify it as being hit with a hellfire from beyond visual range. As for enemy air power, in any of the situations you mentioned, the air forces of each military would be too busy dealing with eachother. I don't think that one of the main priorities of the fighters and fighter bombers would be to take out attack helicopters. Again that is just my opinion on a hypothetical situation.

How about the AH-1 ZULU? Just as fancy as an Apache, just won't crash after it get's some dirt in it's engines.