Mi24 shoot down video from this week in Syria

[Vulcan]

Whatever the cause, and whatever the variant, export or otherwise, they are one tough customer to shoot down, I was going to link the old thread, it had at least 4 videos of various variants of the Hind taking manpads hits and shrugging them off, at least long enough to fly out of the video.  Just a "golden BB" IMO, whatever struck the tail in that spot, probably THE weak point of any helo that isn't a NOTAR or whatever type. 

I vaguely remember back in the pre-net days some articles floating around that indicated the Taliban had figured out weak spots on Hinds operating in Afghanistan and had started taking them down with HMGs. Probably the same spot.

[Zimme83]

I doubt that you can hit a specific part of a helo without some sort of advanced lead computing gun sight. Keeping a large volume of fire in the air and hope you can land enough hits to take it down is a more feasible tactic if you are using HMG:s and light AAA. The ex with the AH-64:s earlier gives a good idea of how it works. A lot of MG-fire causes non fatal damage to a large number of helos but most of them makes it back to base and can be put back into action while a few unlucky is brought down.

Mi-24:s are a flying APC capable of taking hits from anything up to .50 cal so its not easy to take one down but this was definitely a larger caliber shell and it hit and took out the tail rotor. Extremely bad luck for the pilots.

[Brooke]

It looks from the link Vulcan posted that it was a fluke hit by a rocket from the trailing copter.

[GScholz]

Mi-24:s are a flying APC capable of taking hits from anything up to .50 cal...

Actually the cockpit is armored to survive 37 mm hits, and the other vital components like engines and gearbox are protected from 23 mm hits. The whole fuselage is armored to withstand 12.7 mm rounds (.50 cal).

[Ack-Ack]

Russian Mi24P - Gscholz and I had a thread going a couple years back about just how rare it was for the Mi24 to get shot down, so few if any vids back then of it actually going down, even after taking manpads hits - I think there were 3 or 4 videos in that thread of the Mi24 surviving manpads and making it out of the video at least.

It appears that shooting down a M-24 wasn't all that rare of an event during the Soviet - Afghanistan War.  The Soviets suffered 74 Mi-24s shot down in combat, out of those 74 Hinds shot down, 27 were from Stingers and 2 from Redeye missiles.

Maybe the lack of success by Syrian rebels to shoot down a Hind stems from out-dated equipment and lack of training.  Are all the MANPADs they're receiving current stock?  I seem to recall that the Syrian rebels were given a lot of Cold War stocks of MANPADs purchased from Croatia.  Maybe the MANPADs the Syrians are using aren't powerful enough due to be being older, almost out-dated weapons and their training is rushed and incomplete.  For example in the Soviet's war in Afghanistan, the Afghanis were at first using older Soviet MANPADs and the US Redeye, which were barely able to do the job.  Look at the number of Mi-24s shot down by the Stinger compared to the Redeye (27 to 2).

[EskimoJoe]

I could imagine elevation also playing a large role in the comparison. Flying higher up among the mountains of Afghanistan would mean taking out an engine makes it a little more likely that the bird won't be able to produce as much power and bring it down. That, plus the ability for the Taliban to hide and ambush helicopters as they show up. I don't see a whole lot of terrain being used by the Syrians, other than ditches, burms, open ground, and buildings being turned to rubble.

It's hard to get the draw on someone if you're the fish in a barrel.

[GScholz]

I think the only vid I've seen of a Hind going down to a missile is the one with the GoPro which was attached to the Ukrainian Hind and it took some sort of missile hit, and went straight in, and the camera made it - no way to tell what hit it, could have been a much larger missile than a manpads too, SA6s have obviously known to shoot things down in that area...

The only confirmed shoot down of a Hind by a MANPAD missile caught on video that I've seen is this one:



The video is not good enough for a positive ID, but it was reportedly an Armenian Hind. A direct hit to the fuselage with a supersonic missile like that no aircraft can survive.

I wonder how the AH64 stands up, truly, compared to the MI24 variants in terms of taking hits.  I remember in Gulf War 2 there was an operation where some crazy number, like 20 out of 24 Apaches took fire that badly damaged them, some shot down as well.

Very different design philosophies... The Hind is an assault transport/gunship that shares its engines and rotor system with the Mi-8 series of heavy lift helicopters. To protect it all they had to armor the whole thing creating a 26,000 lbs flying monster, bigger than many WWII bombers. It is the fastest combat helicopter in the world, but no one would call it nimble.

The Apache on the other hand has a purpose built hingeless rotor system giving it extraordinary agility and precision in flight. It can sneak around and hide behind terrain like no Hind can... However they could not load it down with much armor so they made every component as resistant to damage as possible. The cockpit is pretty much the only area of the AH-64 that has any armor at all.

So while the Hind can just shrug off a lot of damage due to its heavy armor, the Apache, while also surviving, will have a considerably larger repair bill.

[Zimme83]

AH-64 and Hind is not the same type of helicopter, the Hind is a troop carrying assault ship capable of transporting and supporting infantry. US forces has no helo that has the similar capability. The AH-64 is more comparable to the Mi-28 or Ka-50/52.

[GScholz]

I believe I said that.