Mmmm, can't make much sense of this one.

hmmm...I thought they were just making them basically into UAVs. IE, a pilot on the ground flies the sucker.

Not sure whats the idea behind all that. Perhaps logistics, no need for pilots while flying from one base to another? or on team recovery missions one extra free spot.

No no, to my knowledge UAV's are for surveillance only. I think they're only exploring the capability. To me using these helicopters for UAV purposes is wrong on so many levels.

UAVs aren't just for surveillance. We have UAVs in Afghanistan and Iraq that are armed with missiles and can engage enemy targets.



I'm guessing that they're trying to pull live humans out of danger. People care a lot more about "Apache was shot down, pilot and gunner killed" than "Apache shot down, pilot and gunner in bunker shrugged and switched to a spare".

Though I agree, this makes more sense for scout helicopters, at least at first.

But I don't recall 1 combat helicopter pilot casualty since the start of Iraq and A-stan.

There've been some, you just don't hear about it. Helicopters fail regularly. They're complicated machines.

I googled and can't believe there's a wikipedia article on this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_av ... e_Iraq_War


Two helicopter crashes so far this year in iraq, total of 3 deaths.

Good article. Let's look at the numbers:

278 total helicopter casualties since beginning of Iraq.

But how many of these casualties are related to a mission that was applicable to UAV's? Remember, transporting troops and supplies may form a big part of helicopter missions.

yea, true enough. And that's a piddlingly small number of deaths, in the greater scheme of things. Then again, training pilots is expensive as hell, and experience is irreplaceable.

Also, if we had a really heavy attack helicopter presence, what impact would that have had on ground casualties? If there were a significant reduction in deaths/injuries on the ground, it may well be worth it.

What they need to do is develop a decoy copter, one that can shrug off everything ground launched. Now that would have a significant impact on casualty number.

I don't think you could armor something enough to shrug off large caliber bullets, and definitely not RPGs, but perhaps something nimble enough to dodge everything? I don't see why not. Make it relatively small, put a gatling gun on it (otherwise people would just ignore it), and autonomous computer control with radar/laser to detect incoming fire and dodge it. Infrared cameras to detect launch sites for missiles and even gun barrels. Presumably the radar could pick up bullets in flight and backtrack their position. That'd be freakin' awesome.

Dodge, kill... dodge, kill... dodge kill. It could be programmed to loiter around the battle area until it comes under fire, or directly controlled by a ground-based pilot until its self-defense routines kick in.

Of course, automatically returning fire is a dangerous proposition. There's no guarantee that the people firing at it (or near it?) aren't friendlies.