Jed
I’m all for using the British Army in Afghanistan entirely as a strike force, with occupation duties given to the ANA/ANP or someone else in NATO.
The amount of resources we spend patrolling towns is criminal. If the ANA cant hold a village once we;ve driven off the Taliban by now, they arent ever going to be able to.
And if the two brigades have deployed move from being beseiged to hunting the Taliban, it might be an easier task as well.

But thats not likely to happen.

Thats true Jed but economy of effort is a valid military strategic element, if you can achieve an effect for minimum cost then that is a good thing

Dominic said: “Resupplying a FOB currently requires a fleet of over 100 vehicles, a full battalion of soldiers, if nor more, Apaches and Fast Air for almost three full days. Driving 150 miles through mine fields and raids every step of the way. Thats the cost that needs to be elminitated”

No, not really. It’s not about eliminating costs, its about how you fight this engagement, its way bigger than unmanned helo’s taking cans of spam to boys in their ‘combat outpost’. Is this a ‘conventional’ COIN campaign based on Iraq and other common wisdom, is it something else ? Why do we have COPS ? What is their utility ? Can we not fight a war of maneuver and tactical surprise (well no, because that needs helicopters……)

So this is about the bigger picture, not whether Kmax is cheaper to acquire and run than Chinook or Merlin.

Whilst we’re on the subject…

http://www.army-technology.com/projects/littlebirdhelicopter/

Resupplying a FOB currently requires a fleet of over 100 vehicles, a full battalion of soldiers, if nor more, Apaches and Fast Air for almost three full days. Driving 150 miles through mine fields and raids every step of the way.

Thats the cost that needs to be eliminated.
When Admin first suggested these, I pointed out they would have to be night time use only otherwise every afghan with a gun would take a pop at them, hell the ANA would probably want the load enough to shoot it down.

Could an unmaned helicopter doing night time only supply runs deliver enough supplies to turn a monthly supply run into a 6 weekly supply run?
Does the helicopter cost less than than the 4 supply runs a year we could cancel?

If so, its a good idea.

They dont work in every situation, sometimes we would need a manned helicopter, sometimes we’d need a CLP to fight its way in.

Could the Taliban shoot them down?
Absolutly, but they’ve brought down two of our Chinooks and multiple PMC supply helicopters.
Could we buddy up a UAV and a, well, another UAV, bugger, could we buddy up a KMAX and a Warrior so that if the Taliban do bring one of their AAA pieces out into the open to shoot down a KMAX, we can counter strike?

Its not about replacing the chinook fleet, its about sparing the chinook fleet jobs it doesnt need to carry out.
Like Super Tuc’s arent a replacement for Typhoons, they’re there to stop the Typhoons being wasted on jobs beneath them.

@Richard: In fact we CAN put airdrops within a pretty small area now (another new Michael Yon article is very informative on this topic). I’d much rather see a couple of extra Hercs bought to do these resupply’s than a squadron of K-Max’s. Much more useful…

No defensive aids? How many aircraft would need to get shot down before the concept becomes cost prohibitive? Also, if resupply became critical you’d still have to bring in a couple of Apache’s to suppress enemy fire. If you needed to do that, you might as well use a manned chopper.

If a resupply op will be that dangerous then we’ve got to start thinking of alternative methods. If we can drop a laser guided bomb within a couple of metres of the target, we should be able to do the same with a supply container – albeit with a parachute!

Alternatively, if the terrain suits why not some kind of disposable glider similar to the ones they used in Market Garden? Made of wood and canvas with a couple of black boxes to control it or a disposable UAV with a small cargo hold instead of the sensors?

What ever you use, none will have the flexibility offered by a manned helicopter and the crew will always have better situation awareness than an operator at a remote station.

The advantage of a manned resupply is you can always pick casualties up for the return journey.

As you will all know I have a bit of an obsession with standardising and rationalising equipment so this would go against my better judgement but as we have recently spent nearly a billion quid on UOR’s for the Harrier fleet that has now been withdrawn from Afghanistan what would a handful of these cost in comparison?

If it means we can reduce the airframe hours on Chinook and Merlin a bit or even reduce the need for so many dangerous combat logistic patrols then surely it is worth a serious look

want that one

Jed thanks for that quite a funny point, it is a valid point as well but the chances of it happening are pretty narrow. Maybe some squished Goat?

“You can also send an unmanned K-max on dangerous resupply mission and if it gets shot down then bugger but nobody needs rescued and nobody died…”

Ha ha, apart from the poor bastard stood under the 5 tonne underlung load as it comes careening out of the night sky – lol… :-)

USMC has the budget, can we afford 1 trick ponies ? Admin can you say “I want that one” in Little Britain style….

You’re not alone Admin I would like some as well please.

The reason I think it’s a good idea is that manned helicopters must carry quite a large amount of defensive aids and armament driving up their cost and lowering the payload. You also cannot send a manned helicopter on a dodgy resupply mission due to the risk of it getting shot down and the political consequences of that. The beauty of the unmanned K-max is that you don’t need all those defensive aids so you can carry a higher payload not to mention the acquisition cost is much lower. You can also send an unmanned K-max on dangerous resupply mission and if it gets shot down then bugger but nobody needs rescued and nobody died. Also the whole getting shot down thing especially in Afghanistan is a point that needs thought about as a helicopter will get shot at with dumb weapons. So a manned helicopter with all the defensive kit is as vulnerable as a drone with none although that manned helicopter costs far more and has people at risk.

Whilst I can see some uses for a system like this (Special Forces would probably love to have an expendable helo for dropping their gear and ammo – i’m aware it’s not expendable but it could be used in situations where a manned helo definitely would not be allowed to go, or resupplying remote outposts etc)I would question whether it is more cost effective simply to buy a smaller number of manned multiple use helos that could do the same supply mission, then dash off elsewhere to do something else. At a time when we don’t have enough helos in many roles, is it really wise to spend money on a helo that can only do a very limited number of them in comparison to a manned equivalent? Or at the very least a helo that could also operate during the day without being taken down with a pointy stick ¬_¬.

…My answer would be no.

Think I am alone in seeing the value here, yes, $860k was for the demo but it included all the trials and development of a a working solution for control, handover and mission management.

I agree Richard that it is a one trick pony but isn’t that the point, freeing up other airframes for more useful stuff

I think I read it has terrain masking software and would likely operate at night, for most of the flight profile it would be way out of reach of small arms, is very quite anyway and then just drops like a stone to its drop location, unhooks and away it goes.

So bugger you lot, I want one :D

Jed, you took the words right out of my mouth. How does a fully automated system avoid getting shot down? Also, once it drops its cargo, apart from meandering back to base what can it do? It can’t lend fire support to troops on the ground and it can’t casevac.

I think the USMC should invest their money either in some more UH-1Y’s or a few MH-60S Knighthawks. At least these have a bit more mission flexibility.

You never know though, give it a another engine, a gunners station, some stub wings and a cannon, it might make a nice little gunship!

Also, reading the link, the $860,000 was only for a three day demo.

At night?

The USMC seem very interested, I think it has a role in limited circumstances and is as cheap as chips as they say

Another bizarre capability I just don’t understand. I am sure a 80 year old Talibani grandad with a 100 year old Lee Enfield could take one of these down as it serenely chugs past with its underslung load….