Tail view of a Ukrainian Mi-24 attack helicopter firing unguided rockets at a Russian position.



by MilesLongthe3rd

5 comments

  1. I am dying to see stats about these “blind” rocket lobbing attacks

  4. Over the last nearly 40 years of fire support experience, I’ve never seen a Zuni or a Hydra folding fin aerial rocket – or its equivalent as seen here – hit what it was aimed at.

    The new guided variants, sure. Unguided?: Bda = “Target suppressed” which is a nice way to say “missed”

  5. Don’t feel like re-litigating for the billionth time just how (likely) this is of limited practical use, but I do think it is interesting to consider how this could be adapted to perhaps a more useful thing.

    Idea 1 : have a surveillance drone further in the field with good sensors and overwatch of the target area, sync that up with onboard targeting computer on the helo, and have the target painted in remotely. Once the helo reaches appropriate launch range, it goes into the pitch-up maneuver, and the targeting computer, with the inputs from overwatch, can launch the volley at the exact timing necessary to get effect on target. Maybe a little fussy with the timing, but I bet this could be banged together without too much stress.

    Idea 2 : Rockets, maybe more effective to use the helo as an advance launch platform for a mess of FPV drones using unarmed rockets as extra boost to reach the target zone. I think yeeting a couple dozen angry buzzing (perhaps autonomous at point of rocket burnout!) FPV drones into the enemy would be more dependably terrifying and effective than the unguided rocket tactic.

    IDK. Always gets me with these videos. And I just know those flyboys are really wanting to contribute and do something useful, it’s just the 21st century battlefield makes them so vulnerable, thus the tactics of keeping them well behind the lines where it’s pretty hard to do anything much more than this kind of thing, or be a rapid battle taxi to get SOF to near the zero line.

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