Jets V Heli's
 

Evening fellow Pruners,

I'm currently updating my tactics briefs for work, particularly my evasion training presentations. I want to engage the audience a little more rather than the "If he does A consider countering with B" boring waffle.

I was wondering if any of you fast and pointy jocks had any interesting tales about engaging helicopters you would care to share? What made it difficult? What made it easy? Were there any times you came off worse?

What about my RW colleagues? I've heard most of Evalu8ters dits (with the corresponding hands in the bar) but what about the rest of you? Any tales of daring deeds vs the fast jet community?

What you always need is a gun.

One in each door preferably, with 1:1 tracer

Jets V Heli's
 

"I've heard most of Evalu8ters dits"

Haven't we all!

Camouflage works, especially against trees as does terrain screening.

Harsh manouvres don't unless to evade an in progress specific attack due to sun glinting off the rotors.

A helicopter matching speed and direction of a motor vehicle is difficult to find with a doplar radar. So a Wessex doing 60 kts adjacent to a HGV travelling up the A66 could not be found by three Tornado F3 tasked to kill it.

Jets v heli 1v1 is fair, 2v1 not so fair, and a coordinated 3v1 is death waiting to happen.

There was a time when it was assumed a missile would not be wasted on a helicopter. Recent conflict suggests otherwise. It was widely believed that it would be a spontaneous guns attack on a target of opportunity without a second pass. However the Luftwaffe Alpha Jets were specifically trained as anti-Hind helicopter killers.

A helicopter crew efficiently watching his six is great, until the attack comes from above. There are never enough eyes out of the helicopter.

It was once trialled that helicopters carrying USL on a Brigade move would stop and (low) hover if attacked with the option to jettison and run if necessary. I believe this concept was never subsequently adopted as an SOP.

A helicopter with an alert, well trained crew, operating together, is hard to kill. If they also make themselves hard to find in the first place, a helicopter is a very hard target.
If your tasked with killing helicopters, invest effort in the FIND function and shoot early.

Sun.

I like that Sun Who! Mind if I use that as a quote?

Thanks for the replies so far, keep em coming! Anyone ever tried evasion training at night? If so, how did this affect the price of fish? (I can hazard a guess!)

The Gazelle would have been virtually impossible to detect and the fast pointy guys burn fuel at an alarming rate down in the weeds where the Gazelle did its work. I was very happy to be flying them - especially when I found that nobody saw us when performing FAC. When invited into the back seat of Jaguars I was unable to see my squadron chums either.

Really?

If it's moving and not on the beam, it's a simple radar target. If it beams or slows down it's a more difficult radar target, but that's just the use of different modes and operator skill.

Oh, and despite the camouflage, they are not invisible.

As for kill, IR missile or gun. Nice big, slow target, can't chage its velocity vector too quickly (understand that the vector is pretty short- it can be moved, but for defeating a tracking solution, not enough). Yum.

[awaiting manoeuvrability comments with glee]

Rosevidney1, the Gazelle is not indectible, for loads of reasons.

I truly hope you don't think that the Jaguar was the cutting edge of air-to-air. Hopefully Gazelle aircrew would be happy in their blissful ignorance.

Jets V Heli's
I suggest you look at your spelling and punctuation.

"Jets Vs Helis" would be a start.

FJs vs Helos? I suspect you don't even need to use a weapon to hurt them! I can remember a F3 going over a Winnebago in RED FLAG at around 720KIAS and around 500-800ft AGL (the ground was about 7,000ft AMSL so the jet was doing about M1.15 around the edge of the overland supersonic area) - the supersonic shock wave dragged the Winnebago off of the road and rolled it over several times. A similar shock wave would wreak havoc with a helo and the blades would take a right pounding - also I remember a supersonic pass on an airborne Herc causing an overstress being registered on the Albert!

LJ :cool:

Chinook 240 - surely not all of them? :E

2hrs 24 mins, not bad!

Most modern fighter radars will pick up the rotor disc...these days, helos have nowhere to run and nowhere to hide if they are rotors turning.

Not quite a FJ, maybe an MJ, but an Iroquois gunship was credited with a Macchi kill on an Aussie exercise quite a few years back, as the story goes - the Macchis were flying a repeated predictable path and the Huey sat in a concealed hover and had a crack at them as they flashed past.

DBTW,
It's down to the driver in each airframe and the terrain you fight in. I've been able to elude Typhoons, F3s & F15s etc far more often than not - often having to call the jet on visually to get the training for my stude. Watching an F3 QWI put an AMRAAM into a truck on the A1M was a particular favourite....we were 3km from the datum he called the kill on.....

That said, a non-RWR equipped RW being flown to poor TTPs will be akin to a sitting duck.

In short,don't believe everything in the brochure.

Leon, this tells a different story;

J-CATCH - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I'll take 5:1 most days - the only jet that achieves parity is the A-10.....

The thread title had to drag this classic out.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xu_leZE76VE

As RW I find that as the FW are generally skylined and do not change direction too much then they are a relatively easy kill. It is just a shame we don't get to play much otherwise the point would be made.

Hopefully not covered by previous dits, but back in the dark ages when Helicopter vs FJ tactics were first being considered, some very pertinent sighting issues came out which led to significant changes in our kit.

The FJ drivers were able to pick up the white helmets first, then the white gloves, then the yellow mae wests; all of which gave excellent targets to ensure the helicopter wasn't going anywhere after the first pass.

Following that we (eventually) got green helmets, green gloves and the Mk15 LSJ with the flame orange stole neatly hidden behind olive green. A bonus was that we could watch the dials and gauges without filtering out the reflection of the yellow mae west!

Another long range visual pick was a Wessex with an odd coloured blade, which stuck out like the proverbial dog's as it flickered when seen from above. This has led (in much later years) to rotor blade patterns developed for ops such as aerial fire fighting, where visibility in smoke and high intensity flying is a relatively important issue.