Originally Posted by
dead_pan
I wonder if the term "Self SEAD" is designed to make them feel better about their odds? I can't believe there are many attack helo crews who would honestly rate their chances against modern Triple A or SAM systems using only their unguided weaponry.
I am dredging up (from memory) a conversation with a Marine Snake pilot (AH-1W) from the early 00's. His observation was that they usually flew with a mix of Hellfires and 2.75 rockets, while at the time Army Apache tended to lean more heavily towards Hellfires and his observation (from joint ops?Exercises?) was they weren't as likely to assign various parts of the attack force with SEAD as that was seen as a dilution of combat power.
As there have been a lot of lessons learned published in re Iraq war since then, that's not a reliable observation at this remove.
The sensor-to-shooter link now has a lot more input (over all) from unarmed and / or unmanned assets (OH-58 has gone the way of the plains Buffalo).
How SEAD fits into that is something that may once again change as lessons learned from this conflict get digested.