Copter Arty

I'm surprised; the only instance of copter arty I can find on the internet is ARA; the United States' Aerial Rocket Artillery during the Vietnam War.

Copter artillery is probably the best application for helicopters. Helicopters are fast, and can carry powerful weapons, but their main weakness is that they are fragile. So, the best way to get around their weakness is to make their fragility a non-issue. Helicopters should be equipped, with, if possible (but doubtful), light long-range artillery guns, or if impossible, rocket artillery. As artillery pieces, they would be highly mobile, and would not need to be defended against ground attack. In the event that ground forces do indeed attempt to attack copter artillery, the copters could just fly away, leaving the ground forces in the dust.

Hum...rockets are already available in the inventory of helicopters.... And just in case u don't know, attack helicopter are sometime nicknamed flyin gunship due that they carry air-to-ground rockets pods, AT-missile and light gun (12,7mm, 20mm or 30mm most of the time...) and possesse armor and advanced protection system (like countermeasure). I recommand to you to check some info about the AH-64 Apache, AH-1 Cobra, Augusta A129, Mil Mi-24 Hind, Mil Mi-28 Havoc and many more.... maybe you will extend your knowledge in this subject....

Okay, my mistake. I'm the party in the wrong; ARA used Hydra 70 rockets. It's very low range, however. 3KM max. I'm just of the understanding that helicopters are most often recon and ATGM platforms, instead of functioning as artillery.

Within the Chinese arsenal; the best "conventional" rocket artillery as listed by Sino-defence.com is the Type-90 MLRS system. It has a decent 30 KM max range; and each missile (can't find information on launch vehicle) weighs about 70 KG / a piece. Compare it to a 17-rocket Hydra load, which tops out at only 700 pounds.

Inst said:

Okay, my mistake. I'm the party in the wrong; ARA used Hydra 70 rockets. It's very low range, however. 3KM max. I'm just of the understanding that helicopters are most often recon and ATGM platforms, instead of functioning as artillery.

Within the Chinese arsenal; the best "conventional" rocket artillery as listed by Sino-defence.com is the Type-90 MLRS system. It has a decent 30 KM max range; and each missile (can't find information on launch vehicle) weighs about 70 KG / a piece. Compare it to a 17-rocket Hydra load, which tops out at only 700 pounds.

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Look at the size difference, my friend. The recoil of arty weapons - especially those with long range is much too high for helicopters. And when firing these weapons, it would highly distablise the helicopter and steered it too much off course.

If you are speaking of missiles, I think it might make better sense. However even long range standoff missiles are quite large and a helicopter must really be modified to carry such missile system which again I think is a waste of money and effort since fighters and bombers could fill in that job.

Also the sheer weigh of full size artillery weapons are also out of the range of the helicopters too. Of course you could argue that specially design guns or rockets could be used, but the cost... my friend... the cost.

Fighters and bombers can't do that job because of a lack of stealth. You try to launch an airstrike, you'll probably fill someone's radar system and you might get shot down. With copters, you don't seem to have the same problem.

Maybe I'm arguing the device from the wrong direction. What I'm thinking about, is not really a helicopter equipped with the ability to launch artillery rockets, but more of an MLRS system with an integrated helitransport. This would allow it to move quickly over all types of terrain without difficulty, and to be able to retreat just as fast.

I'm comparing the wrong models; it's incorrect to consider mounting this type of equipment on an attack helicopter. There's already heli-liftable artillery pieces, but they need time and manpower to set up and pack up. The difference between the extant models and the proposed model would be greater mobility on the part of the latter, and the ability to fire from more locations.

The Chinook has a max load of +4000KG, with a maximum load of +25000KG. I don't know what that means.

The Mi-26, on the other hand, has a max load of 28000KG. This is definitely enough to load up a few hundred artillery rockets. This can be used as a test of the equipment concept, and later on, a specialized "rocket helicopter" can be designed.

Conclusion:

I still think this is a very great idea. The Grad Launcher, by itself, weights only an apparent 3 tons. This is well within the lifting capacity of an Mi-26. Say this is indicative of a typical MLRS launcher weight. Add another 2 tons for safety, and we can potentially load 250 Type-90A rounds onto a heavy-lift helicopter.

Ah, so basically you're wondering if there's a way to make artillery extremely mobile, preferably similar to helicopters therefore negating the need for long landing strips?

If so, it still makes sense to build on an existing helicopter design. I can only imagine how difficult it would be to give an artillery battery flight capability(?), the easiest way still appears to be using dedicated "lifters" to do the job instead...

Well, I agree with rhino123, this is something hardly faisable because first of the heavy recoil of long range artillery weapon, you really have to insure the stability of the firing platform to have greater accuracy. And the greater difficulty will to try to aim those heavy rocket accuratly. In case you don't know, there's a vortex created by the rotor. This vortex made accurated aiming for any "slow" projectile very difficult... Even chopper's door machine gunner have to have a special course to learn how to deal with the vortex when shooting with machine gun.... imagine for rockets which the initial speed is much slower than bullets...

There's already Heli-mobile light-artillery. Some BAE... M777? That's an ultra-light artillery piece (4KG) that's both Heli-mobile and can hit targets 30 KM distant.

Okay, forget about it. Let's make this thread about heli-mobile light-artillery, and other things around that nature. I'd still like a more mobile and all-terrain light-artillery piece, still. It would be nice if they had these kids of things, but if you didn't need to drop on a landing site built by combat engineers, and if you could have the heli-transport lift it out of danger as the situation required.

Embarrassingly, I suppose I'm still driven by video games. My two "inspirations" would be the Reaver-Shuttle combo in Starcraft; where, you could drop a mid-range artillery piece by heli-transport (or space transport in this case), have it fire a shot, then reload it back into the heli-transport and run away before opponents could respond. The most common way players could deal with this tactic, would be to use anti-aircraft guns or interceptors to shoot down the transport. Counter-battery fire would also work, but only for the "Terran" race; the Zerg lack artillery support and the Protoss Reaver fires a slow ground-skimming explosive. Here, the artillery piece could be packed up before the reaver could respond. A common comedy in this video game is when two Reaver-Shuttle users face each other. One player would go after the infrastructure and exposed troops of his opponent, and the other player would try to move his Shuttle adjacent to his opponent's. The moment the first player drops his reaver, so the plan goes, the other should counter-drop and kill the other reaver from point blank. Unfortunately, as both players' hand-eye coordination is supposed to be astoundingly sharp, what oft results is a game of peek-a-boo.

The other embarrassment would be the "Siege Copter" in the Red Alert 2 add-on, Yuri's Revenge (don't you love how juvenile these names sound?). This is basically a helicopter that can drop on the ground to deploy a long-range artillery cannon.

P.S.:

"…….We can't afford the extravagance of keeping 6 tubes per FA battalion hanging around waiting for a moment that may never arrive. And when that moment does arrive the ammunition probably won't be available anyway.
One idea I've dabbled with is developing an unguided rocket (10-15km) for UH-60 Blackhawks to haul up and fire in volley from masked positions. With GPS to locate and computers to calculate firing data the accuracy will be pretty good. The beauty of this is the firing platform easily returns to the rearm/refuel point. Now that we're out of enemy artillery range we can site the rearm/refuel point for easy supply truck access……
…..With counter-battery where it's at today shoot n scoot is already SOP. Rotors scoot better than tracks or wheels. "

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Someone else already thought this concept up. I suppose he's still screwed over by the vortex problem, of course, but aren't most modern American munitions course-correctable?

Well, I maybe didn't understand your meaning at first.... did u ask for something like a artillery piece on a helicopter or a heli-mobile artillery piece... well... i was talking about the infaisability of artillery on helicopters.... but for heli-mobile artillery piece, yes it already exist... but the main problem is how fast can your servant shoot a few shots and pack the gun up... and with our modern counterfire system with radar guided counterfire battery... every seconds is a matter of life and death...

Yes guided ammunition already exist, but they are expensive and less powerful compare to a dumb shell/rocket of the same weight because the guidance system and the trajectory correction system takes place... That's why artillery use mainly dumb ammunition to save some money...

Counter battery fire is one thing, but the overal idea of artillery speaks much against this sort of arragment... First of all, artillery is mented to be the instant firesupport to tactical manouvering units and keep in the range of the units in combat engagement. When the manoure units orders fire support, it needs to be deployed in the few minutes that modern artillery with computerised fire value calculators can do.

How does helicopter transported artillery fits into this? Should the infantry wait untill the helo takes of in some distant base, flyes several minutes to the fire positions, takes another several minutes to deploy the gun, and the last few minutes to prepare for firing...? What effectivity is there?

Transporting artillery whit helicopters is good, when the manouvre units needs to be transferred whit helos as well, for example to terrains, not accesable otherways. But the artillery would be deployed into short periods in the firepositions, as would be the manouvre units and when those would be moved away so would be the artillery. Using helicopters to haul them in the normal few mile changes in fire positions to counter counter-battery fire, but to remain under the range of fire....its just too non cost-effective.
Helicopter fuel is much too expensive compared to diesel, helicopter pilots needs more payment and cost more to up keep, helos need more expensive maintaining than trucks....

If the manouvre units are deployed in the area where the truck hauled/SP artillery cannot reach and will require constant fire support that needs to operate under counter-battery thread, Would it be more simplyer to send attack choppers whit rockets and missiles whit the same ammount of fuel than large transporters to haul the guns, which would be needed elsewhere?