Kevin Brooks
I always thought the emphasis on radar stealth was off the mark.

Consider missions like the one at the start of Desert Storm, where
(iirc) Apaches sneaked in low at night and destroyed Iraqi early
warning radars. Obviously, radar stealth seems useful for such
missions.

So, a few stupid(?) questions: Am I wrong about radar
stealth being quite useful in addition to terrain masking?
Is using helos for such missions outdated? Are such deep
missions a marginal issue nowadays, or was it so already
back then? Or is it that the US is focusing its capability
on tackling third rate opponents with minimal own-losses,
rendering the issue of radar-based airdefences largely irrelevant?

without the benefit of the normal SEAD support from your own
arty assets is extremely risky."

More naive questions: Is artillery SEAD really seen as a
requirement for attack helo missions within the envelope
of enemy short-range airdefences? If so, what about operating
out of arty range? Or without having arty on theatre in the
first place (eg much of Afghanistan, esp early on)? And, finally,
if artillery is that effective for SEAD, wouldn't it also be
effective against the targets of the attack helos? Couldn't
smart AT-MP submunitions, or whatever, then do all the job
of the AH's, and more safely?

Moreover, while MLRS can saturate fairly large areas with
submunitions, and will probably ruin the day of any
manpad operator in the target area, one can't possibly
use arty to saturate all the potential locations of
air-defences. At least not with low-level ingress/eggress.
A guy with a manpad can hide easily - in the worst
case he'll be lurking just next to your base, like has
been the case in some Russian helo losses in Chechenya.

And what if the enemy has useful counter battery capability
that limits arty SEAD support? Use AH's to take it out, but...
g