John Mullen wrote in message ...
Tony Volk wrote:

Why argue - drop a bomb on it. (Seriously). A helicopter can be a
difficult target for a relativeily accurate system like a gun, but it
sure as hell isn't going to outrun a 2-3,000' radius of lethal (to a
helicopter) fragments. It worked well enough in '91.


That actually sounds like a really good idea if you've got the
ordinance.

Tony


Depends of course on the helo staying (reasonably) still.

Actually, it doesn't matter what the helicopter is doing. That's the
beauty of teh technique. Even if your helicopter is tootling directly
away at 200 ft/sec (60 m/sec), or 130 mph (pretty good for a NOE
helicopter), i'll take you 15 horrible long seconds to clear the danger
zone. A helicopter can change the direction that it is pointed very
quickly, but it can't change its position very fast. If you're jinking
a helicopter, just stirring the stick around won't do anything but make
you wobble a bit around the flight path. A gun firing solution might be
a bit hard to come by, but the bomb fragments don't care how clever you
are.

The miss distance doesn't have to be very large, either. The one time
that it was tried for real, (1991 Gulf War), an F-15E nailed an airborne
Iraqi helicopter with a Laser Guided Bomb. (The helicopter was on the
ground, but took off as the Beagle approached. The F-15's WSO kept
tracking the helicopter, and the bomb faithfully followed the spot to
the helicopter's rotor mast.

--
Pete Stickney