MH-60S with a M197 20mm cannon!

[Lawman]

This is actually no different than the current setup everyone has. Go in close and shoot a missile that might not do anything in the environment or go in closer and shoot a gun.

So you have a missile that will go up to 8km and your shooting it at or near the min ranges of the seekers look down angle? And now you want to get even closer with a non point weapon system.... Thats just retarded... really Im not saying that as a hit to your community Id say the same thing to any gun guy in my own community doing the same kind of thing and so would others.

Yes there are times where you grab them by the collar and shoot them in the face. Like if lead takes fire on the inbound and trail rolls in for immediate suppression, etc. But designing a weapon from the outset that has no other option is just ignorant of rules that have been written in blood. If I have a max effective range where im using a laser range finder, a target state estimator, and weapons processing computer doing all the math and accounting for all the ballistic factors (including crazy shit like turret bending and ambient air temp/air density) and its as accurate as it is I can only imagine what yours would be.

1rotorhead, sea based or ground based, the other weapon system is always more stable and accurate than you are. Aircraft delivered weapons systems are inherently inaccurate. Think of how many times your just an incling out of trim. That has a huge effect on a bullet once it leaves the barrel due to all the exterior ballistics. If its some asshat in the back of a boat shooting an AK at you from his pirate skif, ok yeah Ill give you that one. Outside of that, planning on the "Ill adjust my rounds before he adjust his" is a good way to get yourself killed. Its not just the bounce of the surface underneath him. The target on the ground doesnt have to account for things like port/starboard effect or bullet jump/drop due to high speed yawing airflow. Lot of Kiowa guys have lost that fight the hard way against weapons literally laid on top of a rock. If your accuracy is only marginal and you can only engage effectively within that guys range, your gambling at best.

Basic rule is engage with the weapons system that allows you to engage in the last 1/3 of its effective range without getting within his effective range. If all he's got is RPGs and small arms, Ill use the cannon. If I know theres a chance he has an SA-16 down there, you can bet Im gonna extend and hit him with a Hellfire, etc. Yes you can do it otherwise but shame on the Navy for going with a system where you dont have any choice but to do it against the rules.

 

[Gatordev]

First up, just a heads up to all to be careful how in depth the discussion goes. We don't need to hear how platform X's spear reaches 6 feet while platform Y's reaches 6.5 feet, but only if you squint.

1rotorhead, sea based or ground based, the other weapon system is always more stable and accurate than you are. Aircraft delivered weapons systems are inherently inaccurate. Think of how many times your just an incling out of trim. That has a huge effect on a bullet once it leaves the barrel due to all the exterior ballistics. If its some asshat in the back of a boat shooting an AK at you from his pirate skif, ok yeah Ill give you that one. Outside of that, planning on the "Ill adjust my rounds before he adjust his" is a good way to get yourself killed. Its not just the bounce of the surface underneath him. The target on the ground doesnt have to account for things like port/starboard effect or bullet jump/drop due to high speed yawing airflow. Lot of Kiowa guys have lost that fight the hard way against weapons literally laid on top of a rock. If your accuracy is only marginal and you can only engage effectively within that guys range, your gambling at best.

Basic rule is engage with the weapons system that allows you to engage in the last 1/3 of its effective range without getting within his effective range. If all he's got is RPGs and small arms, Ill use the cannon. If I know theres a chance he has an SA-16 down there, you can bet Im gonna extend and hit him with a Hellfire, etc. Yes you can do it otherwise but shame on the Navy for going with a system where you dont have any choice but to do it against the rules.

For the record, I'm not defending the Navy's decision to go with the Hellfire (or the 20mm for that matter), but at the time, there probably wasn't a better choice. But how is it that you deciding that the cannon vs HF is any different than our dilemma (given that your cannon is bigger than our current guns)? The same decisions are made on the nautical side, although there's some other additional details that we can't go into here (like who's the asset to go in on someone and actually have a chance at hitting the target with their respective gun...the answer may surprise you).

As for shooting from a boat, I don't think you've had the pleasure of watching numerous SINKEXs. Even on a Frigate, which is a relatively large vessel by current bad guy standards, they can't hit shit with crew-served/small arms. And I'm talking everything from M-14s to .50 to even a M40 (though that was kind of cool to watch).

Again, I'm not saying the 20mm is the answer in today's fiscal universe,

 

[Jim123]

I'm sure we could fit a couple of those on board. STRAFING RUN EXTREME!

Yeah... but to get qualified on it you guys would have to memorize still even more systems knowledge... at least ten useless things for each useful fact

 

[Lawman]

Very true on the sinkex, I'm just going off the observations of our fixed gun counterparts in the Army. The Kiowa guys can't hit shit (comparatively) and they shoot a lot more often than it sounds like you guys will. If anybody goes using the little bird guys as justification, that is the most CW5's in one place in army aviation. Your talking guys with hundreds of thousands of rounds and thousands of rockets of experience each sitting on stuff like 5-6 thousand flight hours.


You'd be surprised on the 30mm. It doesn't really pack anymore powder for it's weight so it's not range that made the Army go with that round. It's weight for penetration when it starts ro really get out there. A 20 at x meters just won't have the umph behind it to punch through something light skinned like a bmp that a 30 would. But we have the weapons targeting and sensors that allow us to use it at good standoff, if we set fixed gun (we have it and it's funny to try in the sim) we have to do like everyone else, fill the windscreen with the target it try and hit it.

 

[Lawman]

Really it sounds like if anything you guys need DAGR more than we do. That laser guided four pack of rockets would weigh less, require a heck of a lot less training of actual rounds fired, and the small warhead would be a lot more effective than a bullet whether it's a dual purpose round or just regular ball.

 

[phrogdriver]

There's some ribbing as well as some valid points back and forth here. This question is serious though. How much stuff is there that Navy MH-60s need to blow up? Those are the expeditionary ones for the most part, right? For an EDATF, you've got 6 helos (4 AH/2UH) of professional/semi-professional gunslingers around.

I kind of get it for the helos on destroyers and cruisers. If a small boy is "alone and unafraid" in the littorals, it makes more sense for it to be able to get some standoff against a surface threat.

In your shore-based missions, you're mostly looking at casevac and the (highly advertised) NSW support. Casevac doesn't need 20mm of death. NSW CAS....well, better leave that to full-time practitioners of that.

How many missions can a platform really do well? Doing really good assault support is a full-time gig, and sometimes we still fuck it away. Add other responsibilities on top of that? Lets be honest, your average Navy helo bubba isn't running circles around his Marine counterpart anyway.

 

[jmcquate]

Stupid question........but why not a door mounted Mini-gun?

 

[Gatordev]

There's some ribbing as well as some valid points back and forth here. This question is serious though. How much stuff is there that Navy MH-60s need to blow up? Those are the expeditionary ones for the most part, right? For an EDATF, you've got 6 helos (4 AH/2UH) of professional/semi-professional gunslingers around.

I got distracted with a shiny object when I was responding to Lawman's post and I forgot to bring up the above. This is really what it boils down to. Do we really need to spend money on this when no one has actually shot anything with a forward-firing pointy thing (on the RegNav side)? Not to mention one Navy coast/community that wrote an Approach article about how they thought they might have been shot at, maybe...if you squint and look at the video tape...an hour later.

Really it sounds like if anything you guys need DAGR more than we do. That laser guided four pack of rockets would weigh less, require a heck of a lot less training of actual rounds fired, and the small warhead would be a lot more effective than a bullet whether it's a dual purpose round or just regular ball.

Ah yes...DAGR (or LOGIR as I've heard it briefed as on the Navy side). The answer to all our problems! We'll be getting it soon! I started hearing that in 2004.

 

[Lawman]

Oh its out there... somewhere... on a shelf and waiting for more money.

We had a Master Gunner give us the word on it probably a year ago as too its status, right now its in limbo because everybody that should be throwing money at it is trying to sit back and piggy back in on somebody else fronting the bill to develop it. Priority weapon in the Apache world is the Romeo model Hellfire so we're out.

I know they've shot a couple of the actual Rockets as of a few years ago but beyond that whether or not they have the software for all the respective airframes or whatever who knows.

 

[lowflier03]

Yeah, cause what we really need is another laser guided weapon to try and shoot at small boats...

 

[1rotorhead]

1rotorhead, sea based or ground based, the other weapon system is always more stable and accurate than you are. Aircraft delivered weapons systems are inherently inaccurate. Think of how many times your just an incling out of trim. That has a huge effect on a bullet once it leaves the barrel due to all the exterior ballistics. If its some asshat in the back of a boat shooting an AK at you from his pirate skif, ok yeah Ill give you that one. Outside of that, planning on the "Ill adjust my rounds before he adjust his" is a good way to get yourself killed. Its not just the bounce of the surface underneath him. The target on the ground doesnt have to account for things like port/starboard effect or bullet jump/drop due to high speed yawing airflow. Lot of Kiowa guys have lost that fight the hard way against weapons literally laid on top of a rock. If your accuracy is only marginal and you can only engage effectively within that guys range, your gambling at best.

I'm not a huge fan of this system either, but it's not the only weapon we'll fly with. If I can use it to keep some heads down and get closer for crew served weapons, works for me. BTW, I'm never out of trim.

 

[1rotorhead]

Lets be honest, your average Navy helo bubba isn't running circles around his Marine counterpart anyway.

WTF?

 

[KBayDog]

WTF?

I think he means that you guys are too busy learning all about these shiny new weapons systems (that you'll never use) that you don't have time to PT.

 

[Pags]

WTF?

I think his point is that we're all within a standard deviation of each other's skillsets. We come from the same pipeline, it's not like the letters after US on your nametag make us or break us.

 

[1rotorhead]

"That you'll never use". Not even worth discussing.