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Comment by Sakos | Hacker News Reader

Manpads really aren't all that effective against helicopters. I don't think anything has fundamentally changed in the past 40ish years in regards to the ubiquitousness of manpads or how they work. Helicopters are comparatively cheap, effective, flexible and difficult to shoot down without proper AA, but that's what combined arms is for, or a lot of luck. Only about 40 helicopters were lost to hostile fire in Iraq from 2004-2009. I'd say the flexibility is the main reason why you can't get rid of helicopters in modern armies. There are just things that planes can't do without protected airspace or a controlled airfield.

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> Only about 40 helicopters were lost to hostile fire in Iraq from 2004-2009

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.

Russia has made a lot of mistakes that have nothing to do with Ukraine. I find it difficult to draw any accurate or useful conclusions from the war that translate to the US or Western armies other than don't repeat Russia's mistakes.

I certainly wouldn't base any opinion on the effectiveness of helicopters in general on Russian performance in the current war.

> I certainly wouldn't base any opinion on the effectiveness of helicopters in general on Russian performance in the current war.

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?.

If the conclusions you want to draw are about Russia, fine. But it's simply not comparable to how Western armies function. I don't see how you're going to remove all the noise from the data like lack of maintenance, bad training, lack of readiness, outdated hardware, bad doctrine execution, bad leadership, etc.

I think there will be statistics for the performance of Russian helicopters against western MANPADS from Afghanistan during the 80s. I'm not expecting that the MANPADS will have got worse since then.

> I find it difficult to draw any accurate or useful conclusions from the 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

Same lesson that every RTS or 4x game has ever taught me! Just need to have the generals play more command and conquer.

Maybe they were playing Total War Warhammer instead, that would explain why they put their leaders so close to the front line...

It seems hard to generalize lessons about wars. I remember commenters who thought the couple day timeline was realistic, presumably because they were used to the way the US invades countries. Most armies aren't Russia, most aren't the US...

I dunno, maybe we need to get, like, France and the UK to duke it out again? (kidding obviously).

My understanding is that many helicopters are not equipped with the necessary countermeasure systems. The Russians send out a mix of machines, some with and some without the necessary gear. These groups ore often ovewhelmed by multiple manpads fired at the same time.

The Russians are a tough counter example because they are operating really poorly and seem unable to coordinate or train operators well.

Their use of tanks is a great example. Russian losses are huge, mostly because they aren’t coordinating with infantry and artillery fires.

Manpads have changed massively. There are still 30+yo systems in the field, which gives a false impression of the tech, but there are also very sophisticated new systems too.

Russian helicopters have had a rough time because of Stingers in Afghanistan and they do not seem to be fairing a lot better in Ukraine.

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