Typhoon93, read something about the US Army's attempt to do a deep penetration AH-64 raid in Iraq during 2003. They did take a bit of a shoeing. One Apache shot down and most of the others damaged.
Apologies for thread drift, but correct. It was an 11 Attack Helicopter Regt mission up around Karbala that didn't go quite according to plan. To cut the long story very short, the coalition spent an eternity trying to work out how to degrade Saddam's 'traditional' IADS capability only for locals and militias on the ground to step up and fill the gaps using observers with hand held radios and telephones and their not inconsiderably supply of small arms and HMGs that was so prevalent. What had basically happened was that the 12 years of operating over Iraq to police the no fly zones between 1991 and 2003, as well as familiarising the coalition with Iraqi TTPs also enabled the Iraqis to get a good idea of our TTPs. Not such a problem if you're in a FJ either operating above the threat or with the speed and experience to be able to do something about it, but AH didn't have any of those luxuries operating low and slow in the heart of the small arms threat let alone the SAM threat and with crews that had little corporate experience of the AO being new to Theatre.
In that one night, the Iraqi militias did a good job of destroying the notion that we had air supremacy and instead made us realise that at best we had air superiority and even then, in the worst case scenario, only at a defined and local level when we could commit resources to ensuring it.
Fast forward to 2014, with the amount of kit including MANPADS floating round N Iraq - remember ISIL have been moving kit freely back and forth across the Iraqi Syrian border and have captured all sorts inc SA-16 and Air a Defence Artillery, then if you do put AH into Iraq, it should be with the expectation of losing a few.
Now, back to that small strike capability we've deployed! But don't forget we've had AT and ISR deployed since the start of this venture nigh on 2 months ago, so taking the whole package together it is quite a commitment for a now relatively small Air Force, but with SDSR round the corner, vital if we are to prevent losing even more capability next year.