"Charles Talleyrand" wrote in message ...
Has anyone used a helicopter cannon at LONG standoff range. By long range I mean
a range where the gun must shoot significantly above the straight line to the target
rather like a howitzer.

My vision is a helicopter standing off for safety and firing at an area. I'm assuming
if an AH-64 unloaded it's magazine at me from 10 miles away I would experience
a hail of shells all around me that would chew up every soft target including
any anti-air batteries.

It would take some sensor to measure range accurately (laser rangefinder) and some
software to compute tragetories, but these things need not be heavy or very expensive.

Has anyone ever even experimented or studied such an idea?

The ultimate range limitation given current helicopter installations
would be the maximum elevation permitted by the turret. The AH-64's
gun is limited to only 11 degrees (the French THL turret manages up to
30 degrees, the AH-1's M197 20 degrees).

The ballistic charactistics of the projectiles is also an issue. At
extreme range short aircraft cannon shells like the western 20mm and
30mm may lose stability and start tumbling. The Russian 30mm is much
better; the shells are much heavier and will carry further, but their
mountings don't have the elevation.

Then there's the stability of a helicopter as a gun platform. I
suspect that dispersion at long range would be considerable.

All-in-all, probably a non-starter for any practical purposes.

Tony Williams
Military gun and ammunition website: http://www.quarry.nildram.co.uk
Discussion forum at: http://forums.delphiforums.com/autogun/messages/