Lots of interesting stuff, that Mi24P cannon flash is interesting, wouldn't have noticed that, having a flash behind the actual nose of the Helo until that video.
Have to agree with Gscholz too, Vulcan is right I think, great finding those blown up pics and vids/etc.
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 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...
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.
edit - It was the 11th's Helo squadron of Apaches near Karbala - only one was shot down/lost, but the rest were hammered pretty good. I wonder in a peer state conflict, when 25+ year old Russian manpads or Chinese copies of such take out AH1s so easily as per the last thread here about that Turkish shoot down - if 95 percent of the Apaches from the 11th got chewed up so bad by just AAA and small arms/MGs, what happens when they run into swarms of infantry deployed manpads units on top of that? How good are the IR jammers/countermeasures and the new active defense stuff on US helos?
Of the 29 returning Apaches, all but one suffered serious damage. On average, each Apache had 15-20 bullet holes; one Apache even took 29 hits. Sixteen main rotor blades, six tail blades, six engines and five drive shafts were damaged beyond repair. In one squadron only a single helicopter was deemed fit to fly. It took a month until the 11th Regiment was ready to fight again. The casualties sustained by the Apaches induced a change of tactics by placing significant restrictions on their use.[11] Attack helicopters would now be used to reveal the location of enemy troops, allowing them to be destroyed by artillery and air strikes.[3]
