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To: Richnorth who wrote (82961)	3/7/2002 1:59:29 AM
From: E. Charters	Respond to of 116816

Never mind a 41 year old weapon, a group of soldiers firing a BAR could bring down a helicopter. Helis and any aircraft of the expensive kind are vulnerable to the rpg and other ground fire. Especially when landing. There is a tactical way to reduce the hazard from a shaped charge rocket and it should have been implemented in the 70's. But hey, those guys are geniuses. They could not make a tank safe from them either! There is no way to completely elminate the risk and every time you reduce it in one area the enemy gets inventive and uses another technology. Wars are often weapon technology races. tit for tat. the other guys got guns too, you have to face it. John Wayne attacks only work in the movies, and in legends. Helis cannot lob launch to return fire, whereas rpg's can be fired from behind cover, such as rock outcrops. In Vietnam they protected slower and less manoeuverable Bells in ground attack roles with faster hummingbird like Hughes craft which had a chance of evading fire at certain ranges and altitudes. 1. RPG's travel at 210 feet per second. 400 feet away you have the count of two to evade. Impossible at times. Hard for an old heavy chinook at any range with its protective systems. No enemy in the country, it's well protected :) 2. Ways to armour against rpg's are well known and light weight. They penetrate, and do not wreck equipment wholesale. They have been doing this since 1941. 3. rpg's can be shot down. A tad expensive. Nothing is impossible. Such a weapon could be armoured by a good tech team in about two weeks. If they did not do things like this in WWII a lot fewer people would have come home. 4. the enemy can be auto return fired at by tracking melissa type equipment. Get em too. Why die for nothing? Redoing a heli now for the future, or light ground attack aircraft would absorb billions in military budgets. Guys suggested less vulnerable cheap anti tank and ground attack aircraft in Canada 30 years ago. You could build a double hulled vstol aircraft of aluminum that you could not damage with an rpg, or at least not damage easily. And it could be built for a million or so. Oh no. the f-16 was it. Had to fly at 75 thousand feet, be built in Quebec, bought off the States and absorb 30 million a plane. And the tails had to fall off too. Nice touch that. They thought the harrier and A-7 were obsolete. until they had to fight an actual sticky war with all kinds of (for them) hard to foresess situations. They are a life saver with their high attack capability and manoeuverability. You cannot fight a real war with aircraft that have to be taken off from 4500 foot manicured runways and can be damaged with a ball peen hammer. Hit an f-16 or a Bell 212 once with a hammer and you can cause a million dollars damage. I could whale away at a DC-3 with a sledge for a half hour and they would taxi away after that, all I would get was tired. You get a bunch of military procurement specialists and avionics guys and drafstmen doing planning and building and wow! you get something that costs 25 million, and takes Isaac Newton to build. It does everything. But who was doing the "whoa guys" logistical thinking? a kid with a pea shooter can take it down and it cannot carry lunch for granny with a fuel load. He send sea Kings in against them! the Sea King will crash before it gets to the enemy and no problem. Or scour the area with daisy cutters and fuel air and THEN pick up/drop off the soldiers. ****** in the future --> "sssk sskkkk got you on the red haze scope starvin marvin, this is big bertha skybound comin at yah. what's it like down there" "we are socked in, they are all over, get us outta here sksks skkk" "skrrr gotcha on that, lots of hostiles. hmm we are seeing jockey squads all over here, close range.. say fellahs, how far can you walk?" " not far surrounded BB. what's your plan? rkkss sskkk" "skkr sskks, well dig some really deep foxholes, you got lots of purple smoke? " EC<:-] Gettin tired of giving the big boys big ideas an not getting paid for it. I will bet the Taliban would pay me more to tell them how to shoot down US planes than the US would in how to avoid getting shot down. Hey! I don't have to bet. I damn well know.