Russian training doesn’t include how to land?
Cry Uncle already you dumb fucks.
You try to land a helicopter when you’re on fire.
I mean, the entire Russian campaign pretty much has been a Grant up to this point. Just keep flooding the opponent with human waves, hoping to overwhelm (see: Cold Harbor.)
The difference is that, unlike the Confederacy, Ukraine actually has the wherewithal to outlast such a coarse and blunt strategy.
A whole bunch of people in that part of the world have perfected the art of keeping grudges alive over centuries.
Nonsense. The North knew about Logistics, whereas Russia does not.
Complete nonsense. The modern implementations of logistics and maneuver were initially promulgated by Grant, though Sherman was the general under whom the concepts really took off.
It’s an unfortunate bit of historical revisionism that to make the Confederate officers look more honorable, the strategy chosen was to paint Grant as a graceless man who simply fed his men into a meat grinder under the grinder clogged.
If anything, the Russians should have taken the lessons Grant imparted to heart. They seem rather to be following the Confederate playbook more closely - using poorly trained and provisioned troops, not maneuvering them especially well, and hoping their “superior” esprit de corps is somehow a force multiplier.
If they left Afghanistan for Iran then that answers the question.
I’m not convinced.
- The missile did not appear to affect the cockpit, so I don’t think the pilots were injured or killed.
- The helicopter was not keeping on a course, so that suggests the helicopter was not on autopilot.
- Autopilot, when it exists on a helicopter, are used for en route phases and/or IMC. I wouldn’t expect it to be used at low altitude on a combat mission.
- Helicopters are inherently unstable and require constant, minute control inputs to fly.
Fuel is stored aft of the cabin. When the fuel tank went off, that probably caught the pilots’ attention. He should have landed immediately. But the helicopter continued, apparently under control, when the pilots lost control (possibly because of the fire).
Yup, and if they don’t get that control, they crash. Which this one did. Just because it lost control, doesn’t mean it’ll crash instantly. It can’t: It’s still subject to the laws of physics.
Here’s another video of the same incident with some additional footage and worse music:
The helicopter makes a couple of turns - right after getting hit in the new footage and at about 0:55 in the original video. I’m not a helicopter pilot, so I don’t know if they would require human control.
And when Lee fed his men into the meat grinder - as he did on the third day of Gettysburg - it’s described as “heroic” and “gallant”.
So now Putin is claiming the grain ships launched attacks on the Russian Navy.
There’s a simple solution to that. Sink their entire Black Sea Navy and then move the grain.
Will a helicopter glide forwards like a glider? Doesn’t a helicopter need to be at a specific forward angle to move forwards at a constantly maintained altitude? (I’ve never flown a helicopter)
It’s kind of brilliant, actually. Many of these Afghan commandos might well have been hoping for an opportunity to gain asylum somewhere in the west, but couldn’t make it to anywhere but Iran due to the sudden Taliban advance. Like, I’d imagine these particular commandos would have been nearest the Iranian border, and so just made their way overland as best they could, with the Taliban in control of the airports. Now, with Russia’s help, they have a free ticket to Ukraine, which is EU adjacent, and they can pawn off whatever military equipment they might still have for spending money on top of whatever the Russians give them.
I wish these men all the best in their efforts to find a peaceful place to settle. I don’t think it would be unreasonable to offer them refugee status in the US once they’ve successfully surrendered to Ukrainian forces.
Anyone can land a helicopter once. For certain very loose definitions of “land,” that is.
Maxim 11: Everything is air-droppable at least once.
Ah, a take on the old skydiving joke. 
Johnny_L.A is a helicopter pilot, so pay attention to what he says, which is “helicopters need constant flight control” (see above). There is a thing called “auto-rotate”, which allows a helicopter to dead-stick land if the engine dies, but the “auto” part is kind of deceptive: the pilot has to maintain really good collective rotor blade pitch, and it does not work very well close to the ground.
No. Helicopters and airplanes fly differently (a fact that cost me a lot of money).
Full disclosure: I have flown two types of helicopters: The Robinson R22 Beta (a Marine Corps CH-53 pilot said they ‘scare the shit’ out of him because they’re so ‘squirrelly’ – his AH-1 Sea Cobra friend liked them because they’re so ‘nimble’), and the Schweizer 300CBi. I have not flown a turbine-powered helicopter, so obviously I have not flown a helicopter with autopilot.
Most airplanes (modern fighters excluded) have positive stability. If they are disrupted, they return to a state of equilibrium. Helicopters have negative stability. When they are disrupted, the diverge from stable flight at an ever-increasing rate. This is why, as I’ve said a couple of times, they require constant, minute control inputs. These inputs are minute, and constant. They are quickly committed to muscle memory in training. If you let go of the cyclic stick, things will go awry quickly. You may gain a second if your friction is tightened down, but you wouldn’t be flying with your friction tightened down.
Imagine balancing a pole in your hand. You need to make constant corrections to keep it upright. If you don’t, the pole will fall. A helicopter is like a pendulum. The rotating mass must be kept where you want it, like the pole, or else it will fall off in any direction and the airframe will follow. So if the pilot is unable to make the necessary inputs, things will go to Hell quickly.
Yes. ‘Autorotation’ means the rotors rotate themselves because of aerodynamic forces. The pilot does need to initiate autorotation quickly and correctly. In low-inertia rotor systems, like the ones on the Robbo and the Schweizer, you have about a second, Maybe less. Something with a high-inertia rotor system like a UH-1, you have a little more time. Once you’re in autorotation, it’s just like flying with power except you’re descending. Autorotation does work close to the ground if you’re going fast enough (but not too fast). ‘Quick stops’ – simulating a power failure on takeoff – are a helluva lot of fun. Autorotations from altitude are a lot of fun, too.
If anyone is interested, here is how to perform an autorotation in a Robinson R22.
Which is why they were atop Soviet tanks instead of Nazi.
I have heard it said helicopters don’t fly so much as beat the air into submission.