A rather strange video showing two Russian attack helicopters type KA-52 and MI-28 conducting a very weird rocket attack maneuver recently raised a lot of questions and speculation.
In the video the two low flying helicopters can be seen firing their unguided rockets towards the sky while pulling their noses up pretty fast.
This actually gives the impression the helicopters are used in some sort of multiple launch rocket system way and this is actually a pretty accurate description.
However what you most likely did not knew is that there is actually a real experimental tactic and theory behind this.
What you see here is an so called hit-and-climb attack or perhaps climb-attack is the more fitting description.
The term hit-and-climb was translated from a old cold war era German NVA manual describing the "science" behind it.
According to the manual this tactic is intended to be used under circumstances when there is no other option for an aerial attack due to heavy intact enemy air defenses for example.
The theory is that the helicopters can fire the rockets from much further ranges to avoid mostly short-range enemy air defense systems such as MANPADS.
However even the Soviets and their allies who taught this tactics in their manuals thought it was effective and there is a number of reasons for this.
First of all the dispersion of the fired unguided rockets is so high the accuracy is heavily reduced.
The second thing is that due to the increased range the penetration performance of the rockets is significantly lowered to a level were the rockets most likely won't have the desired effect on armored targets.
The thrid reason is that because of the physics behind the flypath of the rockets it can happen that the impact velocity of the rockets is not high enough for the warheads to explode.
In the video the two low flying helicopters can be seen firing their unguided rockets towards the sky while pulling their noses up pretty fast.
This actually gives the impression the helicopters are used in some sort of multiple launch rocket system way and this is actually a pretty accurate description.
However what you most likely did not knew is that there is actually a real experimental tactic and theory behind this.
What you see here is an so called hit-and-climb attack or perhaps climb-attack is the more fitting description.
The term hit-and-climb was translated from a old cold war era German NVA manual describing the "science" behind it.
According to the manual this tactic is intended to be used under circumstances when there is no other option for an aerial attack due to heavy intact enemy air defenses for example.
The theory is that the helicopters can fire the rockets from much further ranges to avoid mostly short-range enemy air defense systems such as MANPADS.
However even the Soviets and their allies who taught this tactics in their manuals thought it was effective and there is a number of reasons for this.
First of all the dispersion of the fired unguided rockets is so high the accuracy is heavily reduced.
The second thing is that due to the increased range the penetration performance of the rockets is significantly lowered to a level were the rockets most likely won't have the desired effect on armored targets.
The thrid reason is that because of the physics behind the flypath of the rockets it can happen that the impact velocity of the rockets is not high enough for the warheads to explode.
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