When HN users recommended it
1 HN user recommended this in 2016, in one comment.
20072026
Each tall tick is one HN user's first recommendation. A short tick is the same user again. Click a tick to jump to the comment.
1 HN user recommended this in 2016, in one comment.
Each tall tick is one HN user's first recommendation. A short tick is the same user again. Click a tick to jump to the comment.
Apaches are great for CAS, however one of the more common things for CAS is when someone gets pinned down. You need CAS ASAP and don't always know when you'll need reinforcements. An example would be when I was in Iraq and a pair of Kiowas with .50 machine guns and missle pods were doing air support of raids. One of the kiowas took a well aimed RPG to the tail rotor and went down in the middle of a very bad part of Tall'Afar. They made a military channel episode about it which included some of the video I shot as the payload (camera) operator of a surveillance drone in it.
http://www.amazon.com/Battlefield-Diaries-Episode-Kiowa-Down...
I was a Shadow 200 UAV (aka drone) pilot. We needed some heavy CAS onsite ASAP to prevent a pretty large armed crowd of insurgents doing a repeat of Blackhawk Down in Somalia. So, we radioed to the nearest airbase (in Mosul) roughly 60k away and they launched a Harrier loaded with a GBU50 (Also called an Enhanced Paveway II / 2000lb bomb). The plane was onsite in a few minutes where it would have taken an Apache much much longer to get there.
They dropped that big boy munition on a weapons cache where the insurgents were going back to re-arm. Miraculously, the single infantry platoon near the crash site managed to secure the pilots and hold their ground long enough for the engineers to send a combat wrecker, pull the burning hulk of the Kiowa onto the flatbed, and get everyone out. The only injury was one of the infantryman caught a bullet in the heel. So... to recap, you need something that can go a bit faster than a helicopter sometimes to get CAS somewhere ASAP. A warthog's top speed is 460mph compared to an Apache's top speed of 182mph. The speed will save lives at times like in that video. I know this because I was literally there. It was terrifying.
EDIT (forgot to add): Apaches in fact were almost always doing aerial overwatch of large convoys when we would be driving a batallion of Strykers from Samarrah to Tall'Afar, or to Mosul, etc. The thing is that they do catch a lot of flak by being low, loud, and slow. Helos of any type tend to "hunt in pairs" as we were told as when one starts catching flak and taking fire, the other will pound the originator while the other takes evasive maneuvers. In the above story, the 2nd Kiowa was pounding the hell out of the ground but had to leave station as it was running low on ammo and 2 down helos is a really bad place to be in the middle of a very angry city.