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Fred J. McCall

wrote:

:
:Fred J. McCall wrote:
:
: The IRANIANS claim the helicopters were scrambled to intercept it.
: This is part of my reasoning for putting it down to baseless chest
: thumping.
:
: Hint: Helicopters aren't used as interceptors.
:
:That's because ships haven't had to deal with UAVs before.

Air targets are air targets. Helicopters are neither trained nor
equipped to do air intercepts.

:As someone
:else on this board has suggested, a helo with a machine gun may
:actually be the best way of dealing with small, slow UAVs

"Someone on this board" will inevitably suggest all sorts of stupid
things.

Hint #1: It's not a 'board'. Its called a newsgroup.

Hint #2: Helos are too slow to deal with even a slow UAV. The
leading edge of the rotor goes transonic at relatively slow forward
speeds.

Hint #3: A fighter with a 20mm Vulcan will flat mess up a "small,
slow UAV" and actually has a radar on board so that he can see it and
some actual training on how to do an air intercept, neither of which a
helicopter has.

:until
:something more sophisticated can be developed.

It doesn't take anything "sophisticated" to deal with this threat. If
it's really small and really slow, just blow past it in the mach and
let the shockwave trash it. If it's bigger and tougher, that's why
they still put Vulcan cannon on airplanes.

--
"Ignorance is preferable to error, and he is less remote from the
truth who believes nothing than he who believes what is wrong."
-- Thomas Jefferson