How about Air Support? Airmobile landing? Logistical support? CSAR?
Among the helicopter missions during the amphibious assault we have:
Assault - Transports troops and equipment to the beachhead;
So your idea of how to assault a heavily defended beachhead is to send transport helicopters in to fast rope troops directly onto the beach?
Please show me anywhere that suggests such suicidal silliness outside of photo ops.
Combat logistics - Transports ammunition, fuel, supplies and other cargo;
Using helicopters? And dropping off on the actual frontline?
Mobility of troops on the beach - Allows troops to move faster inland from the beachhead;
So, first you want helicopters to drops troops onto the beach during the first wave assault, then you want helicopters to pick up troops from the beach after is secured to do more frontal air assaults?
Tell me you are dreaming up scenarios to ‘prove’ the relevance of MANPADs without telling me you are dreaming up scenarios to ‘prove’ the relevance of MANPADs.
Escort - Is done by armed or specialized helicopters and must defend against enemies both on the ground and in the air;
Only needed when there is something worth escorting.
Close air support - Done by armed helicopters;
Already mentioned, can and will be done at ranges beyond the engagement range of MANPADs. Going in closer is when opfor has no credible ability to threaten your helicopters.
Medical evacuation - Medvac;
Not from live combat zones.
Search and rescue - CSAR;
The only credible example. But it’s a total crapshoot on what the actual scenario will be depending on where the pilot lands.
Visual and armed reconnaissance;
Why does it have to be done with manned helicopters in the drone age?
Air control for long-range air assault operations;
After taking the beaches, what need is there for more long range air assaults?
C3 for OTH assault operations of LCACs and other amphibious vessels;
Why does this have to be done by helicopters, and if you want to use helicopters for this, why do they need to get within MANPAD range of the coast to do it?
What do you think a helicopter does in an Amphibious Operation? Do you really think that only attack helicopters are used for Air Support? If you think so, you are more lost than a blind man in a firefight.
As if more obvious proof was needed of bad faith discussion than to make up silly straw men arguments.
An Amphibious Operation is a type of operation that does not even need an enemy to go wrong, such is the number of variables involved and things that can go wrong. Just to use as an example, the type of combined operation to make the use of attack helicopters for Air Support functional, the PLA must avoid deconfliction of the airspace as much as possible, this will be extremely difficult in an environment saturated with drones, missiles, helicopters and aircraft throughout the airspace in the theater of operations during the landing.
And when did anyone say the air ops part of a combined arms amphibious assault is easy? The point is MANPADs adds almost nothing to the difficulty for the attacker in such operations because there are already a lot of longer ranged SAMs they will always need to be able to deal with and because of the realities of war in the drone age.
All you seem to want to do is engineer unrealistic scenarios where your precious MANPADs can actually contribute something.
I really try to understand the triumphant mentality here that the PLA should achieve during a large amphibious assault operation but unfortunately the real world of military operations is much more complex than most here suppose, Taiwan can take measures to make the challenges described above even more insurmountable for the PLA and this is much easier for the defending side considering an Amphibious Operation.
The only one letting their emotions and personal attachments cloud their judgement is you.
There are things Taiwan can do to make amphibious ops harder for the PLA, but doubling down on MANPADs isn’t one of them.