Now, I’m not a gratuitous poster of “slam cam” vids, but I watched this the other day on Military.com’s Shock and Awe channel and was just transfixed.
Basically, if you ignore the dorky soundtrack and the jingoistic Bush quotes injected into the audio, this video has some very impressive imagery. I’m amazed at the clarity of the IR vid. But most of all, can someone in the DT audience explain to me how these gunships can seemingly surprise these bad guys like they do? I mean, these helos aren’t THAT quiet and they seem to stay there for a while.
Help me here…
(And PS — for those of you who’ve patrolled the mean streets of Iraq, you’ll appreciate the sense of “get some”…I know I did…)
– Christian
{ 32 comments… read them below or add one }
At least in urban areas, helicopters were/are more or less omnipresent, kinda lulling the inept into complacency. It is not alway exactly clear (to the bad guys) what the helicopters are interested in – they may be standing off or orbiting a good distance away. I guess sometimes terrorist bravado can add up to a bad day.
I live near an army base that has a lot of helicopters, and you’d be surprised how close a helicopter can get before you realize it’s there. If the helicopter is more than a couple of hundred feet above the ground, a lot of times you don’t hear it at all unless the wind is just right.
I’ve also noticed there’s also a big difference in the noise generated by a helicopter with two rotor blades and one with four. The four-bladed helicopters like the Apache and Blackhawk don’t produce that distinctive ‘thump-thump’ sound of the old Hueys that you can hear coming from a long way away.
The helicopter gunships in those videos probably aren’t as close to the bad guys as they appear. The effective range of the Apache’s 30mm cannon is 4000m (just under 2.5 miles). A Hellfire missile has a range of somewhere between 5 and 7.5 miles. If an Apache is 2 miles away and downwind, odds are the targets on the ground can’t hear it.
Apaches are quieter than most helicopters. And as Jeremy stated, they can stand off and hover quite a ways away, especially at night. You don’t know they’re there until they open up on the enemy. I’ve watched gun cam video of insurgents milling around and working completely oblivious to the Apache hunting them waiting for a clean shot. Also, depending on what city you’re in (especially Baghdad), hearing helicopters isn’t something new that would peak your interest.
It’s SOP for Apaches to fly high enough so they can’t be seen or heard. Exactly how high that is, I’m uncomfortable to comment on.
mmm. snuff film, cool
When I was stationed overseas, one post I was stationed at was very close to both a foreign airbase and one of our own heliports.
There is a major difference to the sound of different birds flying. The UH-1 is as distinctive as they come. Next is the big CH-47. It is also distinctive and you can hear it a ways off. The Blackhawk was much quieter but still you could hear it coming. I also heard littlebirds buzzing about, not as loud but a more pronounced whining kind of sound. I even was fortunate to hear a Helix helicopter flying. That one was very loud. The Apache is quieter than all of them…unless they turn and the rotor blast faces your direction. Those blades work great at deflecting the sound downward.
Seems like they missed a lot, a lot of people ran away, and seemed to get away. I know they are a long way off, and doing very difficult shooting.
But if you try and kill a haj and miss, wont his allah love just go up and up, and make him even more of a threat?
If you try and kill them, and miss, using all the money we have compared to them, i would think that they would be much more inclined to do stupid things. just me?
Boogy Man, sure looks like they did a lot more killing than missing…..
The Gatling is awesome, but they need to do something about the accuracy. A lot of those monkeys got away. They should consider making an anti-personal Hellfire – give it an airbust frag/buckshot warhead like they did for the Abrams. Then every time there’s a dozen monkeys milling around in the crosshairs, we’ll know they’ll get all of them in one sweet shot.
CJ, referring to human beings as "monkeys". Clearly you are a lowlife.
CJ, The Apache does not use a gatling style weapon. It uses a 30mm, chin mounted, cannon. Its only a single barreled weapon. The one that uses a Gatling style weapon is the Cobra which utilizes a 3 Barrel minigun that is also chin mounted.
As for an anti-personnel hellfire? The hellfires you saw were mainly going for vehicles or where the explosive force could do the most damage with the least amount of collateral damage. You fire off a hellfire that is in essence a shotgun shell in an urban environment, the collateral damage will be very high and cause more insurgents to be created. A tank can do much better with such a shell because they have a better ground picture. A tank never goes in alone without either another tank with it or ground pounders nearby.
God I had to mute that video, considering 50% of ALL YouTube videos are played to it!
Played to that song is what I meant. Sorry
Tell ya what, some jingoistic Bush quotes would certainly be refreshing about now. What kinda quotes would be forthcoming from Obama? Anything that doesn’t include an apology or broken promise isn’t avaliable from “Cool Cat Daddy”.
Is he a small forward or a 2-guard? Just wondering. I bet Biden could tell me…
By-the-way, great video!!!
Remember, the Vietnamese used to call the Cobra “the whispering death”, so imagine how much quieter an Apache is compared to it.
Oh I see, Barack’s a point-guard, he’s making all the proper passes and assists. Does anyone think Obama is the least bit engaged in the military happenings beyond being indecisive with the decision to send needed additional troops to Afghanistan. He’s a pretender putz who letting sycophantic-minion, so-so military genius’s in the guise of John Kerry and Jingo Joe Biden set a wrong-headed agenda…
Sorry about the news report.
The rotor systems for Apaches were developed and tested to be able to hide, pop up and fire and either hide again or run away. The pilot can make the things very quiet. especially at altitude and keeping the craft steady. Then there was the Longbow variant. With the targetting above the blades. These things were made to hide behind trees in Germany.
I’m sorry too—But gratuitous statements about “jingoistic quotes of George Bush” don’t leave me settled. Bush will be remembered in a much better light than the ONE, you can make bank on it.
The video speaks for itself, very visually descriptive, although it also had me wondering how-the-hell people could just stand there and allow themselves to be shot and those questions were answered with subsequent posts, thanks.
What dorky soundtrack? The music is fine….
I thought the music was great!!!!!!!
I’m not convinced ALL of that video is from Apache’s. Some appears to be UAV.
I miss the early days of the Iraq war when I could watch something like this and think ‘badass!’. But now the words of Stan McChrystal echo in my head. We really are sowing the seeds of our own destruction with airpower. Watching them chew up the sides of that apartment building with the 30mm cannon breaks my heart. Don’t kid yourself thinking that the 30mm and the Hellfire missile are precision weapons. Even if the only people dying in the vid were bad guys, those neighborhoods are getting shredded. How would we react if a foreign army was doing that to our neighborhoods?
I can’t believe some of us here are cheering this on. After 8 years of war, has anything about COIN sunk in?
And the music does indeed suck.
I look forward to the day when we have guided bullets that can take down the bad guys cleanly — no messy explosion and fly shrapnel, no bad guys hopping away. Just a quick burst or two and the 5 guys fall down.
No idea when that will happen, but that’s clearly the direction both technology and political pressure are headed.
Killing more than one insurgent at a time without resorting to a missile is a challenge that will take a long time to eliminate. I’m sure the 30mm was designed in the anti-tank role and the specifications call for accuracy that is decent for tanks and poor for personnel; and that it won’t be cost-effective to design a sniping platform that kills people reasonably accurate 3,000 meters out.
Would it help to design more accurate Zuni rockets? Instead of resorting to the Hellfires? The rockets are smaller, but I don’t know if it’s possible to design them to be more accurate…
Or put a fifty-cal in a Predator, or a dual-50. Or a 20mm. In principle if you’re dispersing insurgent groups, as long as you rip apart a few enemy and send the rest scurrying for cover, you’ve damaged a terror cell and weakened it or taken it out of commission, at least until it reorganizes. As long as a cell is out of the fight it can be hunted and won’t be hunting. You don’t need to kill them all.
A principle worth exporting to Afghanistan.
Posted by: Ed at October 20, 2009 10:42 AM:
“The one that uses a Gatling style weapon is the Cobra which utilizes a 3 Barrel minigun that is also chin mounted.” Since we’re getting technical, “minigun” refers specifically to the 7.62x51mm version. There’s nothing “mini” about the M197 :-)
As for the sound (or lack of it) from a helicopter: I’ve been in close proximity (1/2 mile or less) to an AS550 FENNEC light observation helo operating at low altitude and making use of cover. You can hear it’s there, sure, but not where it’s at. Kind of spooky.
Regards & all,
Thomas L. Nielsen
Denmark (presently Luxembourg)
Well Tom, I didn’t have the nomenclature for the Cobra’s main weapon, but knowing that it is only 3 barreled and people have seen miniguns, the imagery would be sufficient.
The super-cobra’s gun is the m197 tri-barreled 20mm cannon. I am pretty sure that the AH-1W SuperCobra is the only one we have left in service and then only with the Marines.
I’d be interested to know what kind of ammo that 30mm is firing. Looked to make quite an explosion on impact. I’m sure just being in the vicinity of one of those impacts could kill you. Most of those dudes are dead.
Nightwish eh? Shame that band doesnt have the same singer anymore.
Isn’t there another way to more accurately kill these guys? I mean, a 30mm cannon seems like overkill, and besides, those apartments that get torn up could have other people in them. There are people that join anti-american jihadist movements simply because a loved one was killed by a US gun or missile.
$700 billion for the war in Iraq alone (so far) and 4351 US dead, over 30,000 US wounded, over 110,000 Iraqi civilian dead and all I got for my forced $5200 contribution is this cheesy video. Big oil and Iran do appreciate the memento.