M14 Forum

markp

This is poor planning, plain and simple.

Rule number 1: Don't fight wars you cannot afford to win.
Rule number 2: Have a plan that works.

We waste plenty of money, more than enough to retrofit some mothballed AH-1s lying in the desert somewhere. There are plenty of dollars and assets available that COULD be used for these missions.

Hell you could practically use a Cessna 172 with a minigun to get the job done. Sure, a pathetic micro-spectre (tm). You don't need a high dollar multi-billion dollar air asset to fix this problem.

The point is that these should be done with an armed escort... and I don't care how that gets accomplished, but it solves a lot of problems.

Mindfield

Us adhereing to certain aspects of Geneve against an opponenent who hasnt signed it is stupid, they wouldnt care anyway as they must kill ALL infidels, add the guns back, problem solved

Albud3

Hell, if they're worried about the weight of a M-60/134/240 system on a Blackhawk, get GE to start making these little MoFos again!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XM214_minigun
Saw one of these fired at Ft. Campbell and it was an eye opener! It was mounted on a UH-1 as a door gun and you could see the smiles on the guys lucky enough to fire it from more than a mile! Completely different sound than a M-134 and at that rate even the M-193 5.56mm round would chew through almost anything! Wonder what the M-855 would do? I believe the factory reps said two M-214 systems w/ammo weighted less than one M-60 system (1982).
Sure wish some were available for civilian ownership !

markp

300 lbs with 3500 rounds... yes, that would be perfect for the job.

All we need to do is keep peoples heads down for a few minutes to get in and out. This would do that.

bigbang

I am really ashamed of it, that my country is part of this dirty game.
Although we are responsible for RAC North command we have anly a few 30 year old CH53 in the hot/high version availible. Non of it is armed in medevac missions. Thats not enough even for routine supply operations. If we havend had Brit and Dutch C130 supply we would have run out of essential materials very fast. Although planned in the beginning 90s the European NH90 helicopter is`t avalible jet, at that time nobody calculated with hot and high misssions. The available UH1D couldn't climb over the 5000m Hindukush. Our attack helicopter Tiger was ordered by our procurement clowns with antitank missiles instead of a 30mm nose cannon ( as the French did). Our procurement clowns fought still in cold war dimensions instead of anticipating the next war.
Now we are dependant on US airmedevac capabilities and thereby detracting your own capabilities.
Sorry for that
Wolf

Mindfield

At least y'all are standing with us still, unlike the Spanish. The problem is everyone always prepares for the last war and not the next, we need an emphasis on Asymetrical warfare, no ones dumb or equiped enough to go toe to toe in a conventional war w/ us, they'll lose handily. We are going to be fighting guerilla wars from now on more so than conventional wars and should adjust

Philz M1A

Ah, but here's the issue. For the most part all we have trained on in the last 10 years has been COIN. Very little (if any) emphasis on true full spectrum operations and conventional warfare. Most company grade leaders have very little to no experience taking their Soldiers through exercises which stress conventional warfare. Not saying they couldn't learn...

spsosicmcise

Im surprised by this story. All my experiences with Army medevac pilots has been very good in helmand. I've seen them fly into some very hot LZ's with what seemed like complete disreguard for their own safety. If we had a casualty and army air was picking them up our guys were pretty confident that those pilots where going to put that bird on the deck and get you out of there. It might just be a pilot issue, like said above the guys in my AO seemed to have no problem risking it.

Maxepay

There were lots of armed "slicks" that went in after casualty's in VN when the medivacs weren't available. The 227th Assault Helicopter Co did it with H model UH1's.

gregaba

I have the highest respect for the medivac crews we had in nam.
I watched 3 of them shot down trying to evac our wounded one night when the sky was full of tracer fire. They keep coming reguardless of the dangers.
The only reason the nva quit shooting was because a cobra came in acting like he was a medivac and when they starting to try to shoot him down he let loose with the gatling and wiped most of them out.
I think the military is in a bad spot with their hands tied with the concept of the unarmed medivac.
This came about in the vietnam war by a bunch of chair pusher [mcnamara] who were more concerned with how humain we looked then how many lives could be saved.
With the president we have now don't expect any changes.
I would expect the medivac teams are under order's not to go in if there is any enemy Fire.
My 2 cents, a sore point with me.
Greg

82nd ABN

Interesting this should come up on the forum. Not that it is directly related to arming medivac helicopters it has a bearing on the entire fleet. This was in the military times email I received today. The fleet is in trouble.

http://m.military.com/news/article/a...elo-fleet.html

CharlieEcho

Something I've carried with me since I was a crewchief/mechanic on helicopters was the hoarding of service hours. The maintenance sections were always short handed and busy. The required inspections and service lifes could always be counted on to keep aircraft out of the air. It's followed me through life. Is the trip really necessary? Your due for an oil change already?

AZcreeker

Having served at the 95th Evac. Hospital in Da Nang, Vietnam, I treated many med evac crew members who were shot while picking up wounded GIs and RVNs.
One case sticks in my mind. A med evac pilot was hit in his righrt hand that was on the control stick. The bullet entered the chopper dead center of the Red Cross.

Joe

Depth Afield

Bingo. These military "conflicts" are not a gentlemen's war.
IMHO all possible gloves should be off.

A-fricken-men.

berndog

Charlie echo

As a rotor wing, skid kid I have NEVER seen any Maint department that missed a mission because of such a thing!

Quite the opposite. The Maint schedule is just that a schedule. It can be and is adjusted to forfill mission requirements! Just because their was a "1,000
Hour phase inspection" due doesn't mean you pull that full mission capable aircraft from the flight schedule. There is wiggle room built into these inspections to allow for such things.

Plus the Maint officer (AMO) or the CO could over ride any such Maint requirement to forfill the mission schedule.

I have heard stories from Vietnam of some real bad issues and I saw our sister service, the Army medivac unit, in Somalia pull this, can't take the mission because we don't have operational aircraft, but I never saw any skid unit I was involved with fail to fill the flight schedule!