Objection your honor. Objection.Raj Malhotra wrote:The traditional type of CAS in which the aircrafts circle overhead and go for repeated passed/dive bombings are over due to manpads.So even CAS will be single pass, heavy bombing type. In this role the jags are good.The point is that among the types in production in India what choice do we have?
Dhruv-too vulnerable, it won't get up, too slow, light weapon load etc.
It is only fixed wing aircraft that are forced to overfly the battle zone while firing or dropping unguided munitions because the whole damn aircraft has to be aimed at the target and that means the aircraft has to fly AT the target and overfly it. Its exhaust forms a nice hot ass for a manpad to lock on to as it passes over.The helo need not do that at all.
Combat helicopters can be be used in a manpad environment by taking terrain features into consideration. The Helicopters use mounds, dunes or low hillocks or even forested areas to just pop up and pepper an area with unguided rockets or guided hellfire type munitions. Even strafing can be done in a pop-up, fire and vanish mode without giving the man with the manpad to raise his head get a bead and fire. And even loose shots he gets may miss because the helo is not visible for more than 10 seconds or 15 seconds at a time.
Even the much critcised "under the chin" sighting apparatus of LCH is easily used behind terrain features by hovering in a chin up- tail down mode so the profile of the helicopter visible to a person wanting to get it is too small and too transient to get a bead.