For now though, while western militaries can afford to hand out LAWS and MANPADS to their troops like sweets, India’s main rivals probably can’t. Yes an individual MANPAD is much cheaper than a chopper, but to defend your entire army from a few dozen choppers you’ll need to hand out a heck of a lot of MANPADS to get the coverage.
The main saving grace of a system like this is that the munitions, unguided rockets and cannon rounds, are pretty cheap. In contrast while drones are much cheaper than the chopper, they’re very expensive as munitions.
Based on the current war in Ukraine, this isn't true at all.
Even relatively expensive loitering munitions (compare to mortars dropped from DJI drones) like the Switchblade 600 cost in the range of $10,000-20,000 per deployment, significantly cheaper than the flight costs for a rotary light attack sortie and much cheaper than even the "low-cost" missile option for the Prachand (the Thales FZ275 LGR - the high-cost option is the MBDA Mistral, which costs $300,000 per deployment).
There is no scenario in which a manned rotary craft competes with a drone on cost.
What drone competes with a manned MH-74 on cost? It seems like the traditional drone advantages disappear when the payload is humans.
And to actually the thread, drones ARE being worked on that can go do search and rescue, bringing back the victim. Safer for crew, better coverage and can get into places a traditional rotor craft can't.
What you are comparing is capability, not cost, and by definition you cannot have an unmanned helicopter with pax.
To be honest, your reply is so disingenuous that I wonder if you're trolling?
Technically the space shuttle had limited autopilot capabilities so you could see it as a drone carrying humans, one of which happens to be a pilot who will control it at other times, but that's just a coincidence. And it was way expensive. You fool, you absolute fool.
And anyway, what is a fly-by-wire system, but a drone that is piloted remotely... for very small definitions of "remote."
I dunno. I don't think there's any productive discussion possible with people who are (for some reason) willing to ignore context and widen your claims so you can be wrong.
I feel like you may be in need of some introspection.
That’s to say switch blades don’t have comparable range obviously, and that’s not nothing.
If the helicopter can do something that no drone can, then it does compete regardless of the extra cost/complexity/manpower needed to deploy it.
No question helps are very expensive, but the vast majority of the costs are incurred whether you deploy it or not. They can range over hundreds of miles performing a wide variety of tasks and carry far more capable sensor, communications and weapon systems than drones.
As I said I think drones are here and very capable, and they’re the future for these sorts of missions, but we’re not quite there yet.
They can't. These are expensive in the West due to the privatized defense industry racking up prices. Russia and China can. And countries like India, who buy from them cheap, can.
It's always been the same, I think people are confused because for decades the US has been attacking AK47 wielding farmers with $$$ cutting edge technology but wars between relatively equivalent forces is always a blood bath, everything you can come up with has a cheaper counter measure
> The impetus for the development of the LCH Prachand came in the form of the Kargil War, a conflict fought between India and neighbouring Pakistan in 1999, which revealed the Indian armed forces lacked a suitable armed rotorcraft capable of operating unrestricted in the high-altitude theatre.
In that conflict, Pakistan downed more than one Indian MiG with a man-pad, so I presume this scenario is not lost on India w.r.t. development of this aircraft.
Russia has lost that many helicopters in about 9 months in Ukraine, id say the effectiveness of helicopters is largely dependent on the capabilities of your opponent and whether or not you can gain air superiority.
I certainly wouldn't base any opinion on the effectiveness of helicopters in general on Russian performance in the current war.
How about the side that can out produce and outspend (or has friends that do) will come out on top. Same lesson from ww2 . The tricky bit it to stay standing till then
I dunno, maybe we need to get, like, France and the UK to duke it out again? (kidding obviously).
Sure but (and I could be wrong here) isn't this the first time that modern Russia helicopters has gone up against modern MANPADS in a near peer type of conflict?.
Id say it shows at least the effectiveness of different MANPADS against specific countermeasures no?.
Their use of tanks is a great example. Russian losses are huge, mostly because they aren’t coordinating with infantry and artillery fires.
If you want to be very safe you can sit static encased in a metre thick steel shell, but you won’t achieve anything.
End of the Helicopter? (no) - MANPADS and helicopter losses in Ukraine
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnoKpXvj41A
The TL;DR is "It's complicated".