전투기 전투기로 헬리콥터를 잡을 때의 난관; 찾기가 어렵고, 록온 유지도 어려움

[위종민]

미해군의 F-4 파일럿 John Monroe Smith가 VX-4에 배치됐을 때, 1970년 10월부터 미육군 휴이 코브라와 함께 공격헬기 전술 개선을 위한 Army Project 43-1을 수행했는데, 전투기로 헬기를 잡는 방법도 프로젝트에서 연구했네요. 

헬기는 지상에서 로터가 먼지를 불러일으키거나 블레이드나 로터 헤드가 햇빛을 반사할 때는 찾기 쉬웠지만, 햇빛을 받고 있지 않거나 착륙해 정지중이었다면 찾기가 거의 불가능했다고 합니다. 

낮게 비행하는 헬기를 공격하기 위해서는 강하각 30도가 아니라 10도/15도 강하각을 유지해야 했는데, 이 각도에서는 지면 클러터로 레이더 락온을 유지하는 게 힘들었고 로터 블레이드도 레이더 난반사를 발생시켰다고 하네요. 레이더 락온을 유지하고 스패로우를 발사해 격추시킬 때까지 충분한 시간을 확보하는 게 어려웠다고 합니다. 사이드와인더 역시 지면의 열신호 구분 문제로 대부분의 경우 미사일의 시커가 잡고 있는 게 지면인지, 헬기인지 확신할 수가 없었다고 합니다. 

통념과는 달리, 1970년 당시엔 공대공 역할의 공격헬기 또한 매우 치명적인 플랫폼이었고, 전투기가 헬기를 공격하는 가장 안전한 방법은 자유낙하 폭탄을 투하하는 것이라고 결론내렸다고 하네요. 

걸프전쟁에서 F-15E가 LGB로 Mi-24를 잡은 적이 있는데 의외로 폭탄으로 헬기를 잡는다는 아이디어가 예전부터 있긴 있었네요. 

US Navy F-4 pilot who faced off US Army Cobras in mock combats tells why AIM-7 and AIM-9 missiles didn’t work against attack helicopters

US Navy F-4 pilot who faced off US Army Cobras in mock combats tells why AIM-7 and AIM-9 missiles didn’t work against attack h

US Navy F-4 pilot who faced off US Army Cobras in mock combats tells why AIM-7 and AIM-9 missiles didn’t work against attack helicopters

By Donald Auten

Dec 11 2024

In this article:

• Roger Ball!
• Army Project 43-1
• Why AIM-7 and AIM-9 missiles didn’t work against attack helicopters
• A free-fall weapon instead of air-to-air missiles against attack helicopters

Roger Ball!

He was the second of two children and born on 25 January 1940 in Shandon Baptist Hospital in Columbia South Carolina. He, in every way, gave the appearance of a normal, healthy, well-developed kid of average height, slender but not skinny. History would show that he was anything but normal.

His name was John Monroe Smith, and “Roger Ball!” is his story—a tale that should be told. It intertwines the true, firsthand accounts and experiences of a fighter pilot with the significant developments in the fighter community and historical events in which Captain John Monroe Smith, USN, call sign “Hawk” was a part. Finally, it speaks to the men who laid their careers and sometimes their very lives on the line for their shipmates and their country.

Hawk was a legend in the fighter community. During his thirty-year career, he forged a reputation as a skilled and lethal aviator in the air-to-air combat arena, a natural tactician, and consummate leader. To many, he was one of the most essential pathfinders in the modernization of the naval air war arts.

He was just a man, but his story, his life adventure, is a high-fidelity history of personal achievements for naval tactical aviation, devotion to a cause, and service to his nation. It was a time during and shortly after the Vietnam conflict that America became ideologically divided. The military was disillusioned with the intrusion of nonwarriors in the White House over the conduct of the war, and tactical aviation of all the services was struggling to catch up to the realities of the war’s hard lessons. It was a time when the Navy needed leaders and tenacious thinkers to set things right again. It was Hawk’s time!

Army Project 43-1

This model is available AirModels – CLICK HERE TO GET YOURS.

When last we left Hawk, he flew a US Army Huey Cobra as part of Army Project 43-1 (aimed at improving combat tactics for Army helicopter forces as well as Navy, Marine Corps, and Air Force TACAIR communities) while he was assigned to VX-4.

Early during the project Hawk, Whiskey, and the other project aircrew quickly learned that the little helos were exceptionally tough to see low against the terrain. Hawk recalled, “There were two ways we could find them. If they hovered close to the ground, they’d kick up dust and debris. That was pretty easy to see. The other way was to get down-sun from their position. The sunlight flickering off the blades and rotor head caused rotor flicker—similar to sun-glints off of our canopies. But if they were down sun from you, or if they sat on deck with zero pitch on the blades and didn’t stir up any dust, it was damned near impossible to see them.”

During the tests, the fighters were tasked to maintain combat airspeed and altitudes commensurate with a Vietnam type ground threat scenario. Fighters searched for the helos using radar and visual cues in a grid area. If unable to detect the helos in a reasonable amount of time, ground controllers incrementally narrowed the search grid until the fighters acquired the targets. Once the Cobras were visually acquired, the fighters set up for an attack and the Cobras attempted to escape or counterattack.

Hawk commented, “We learned to maintain a good energy package when we hunted them. Three hundred fifty knots and four thousand feet was the minimum. But getting sight of them was only part of the problem.

Why AIM-7 and AIM-9 missiles didn’t work against attack helicopters

AH-1G Cobra helicopter

“Keeping the tally was also difficult. We had to stay close to keep them padlocked but we didn’t always have enough altitude to set up for the desired thirty-degree dive, so we usually had to accept a ten- or fifteen-degree dive angle. That caused some problems for our radar and weapons.

“It was tough to get a radar lock against the ground clutter, and their rotor blades caused a radar return that looked a lot like a jamming strobe. Trying to lock the target, get settling time on the radar, and enough time for the Sparrow to come off the rail, fuse, and guide on a helo operating in ground clutter was really quite a challenge—in fact it was nearly impossible. Even when you did everything right, we figured the probability of a kill with a Sparrow was extremely low.

“Trying to kill it with a Sidewinder didn’t improve that probability much. We had many of the same problems. Instead of a radar acquisition problem, the seeker head had trouble looking down over land and differentiating between the heat from the terrain and heat from the helo. A lot of the time we weren’t sure what the Winder was actually growling at—the helo or the ground.

“One of our objectives was to develop tactics for the Cobras and develop them we did. The project called for several sorties with two Phantoms opposing two Huey Cobras. When the helo pilots realized they’d been spotted, they flew in a defensive orbiting laager, 180 degrees out of phase with one another. If the fighters rolled in to attack using a low dive angle, they were easy to spot and predictable.

A free-fall weapon instead of air-to-air missiles against attack helicopters

This print is available in multiple sizes from AircraftProfilePrints.com – CLICK HERE TO GET YOURS. F-4B Phantom II VF-84 Jolly Rogers, AG204 / 151491 / 1964

“This attack profile could easily make the fighters the target. When the Cobras saw the fighters rolling in, the helo in the best position could pull his nose up and fire his gun, rockets, or heater missile at the fighter. If he didn’t kill the fighter during the head-on pass, the other helo was usually in position to get a heater shot as the fighter pulled off.

“From a fighter perspective we found that the attack helo in an air-to-air role proved to be a very lethal platform and nothing to be trifled with. We finally concluded that the safest way to attack a helo with a fighter was to drop a free-fall weapon on him, stay at altitude, frag him or overpressure the rotor head, but don’t go in and mix it up. You’ll surely be surprised and just may get your ass whipped if you do.”

Hawk learned more about helicopters and the guys who flew them in just a few weeks while working the project than he had in the previous six years. “I really had no idea how deadly they could be; I thought helos were something to deliver the mail or fish you out of the water when the jet stopped flying. I guess I was super naïve, but I had no idea they could also blow your ass away.”

Photo credit: Rob Schleiffert from Holland via Wikipedia, PH2 Chris Holmes/U.S. Navy and SSGT BOB FEHRINGER/U.S. Army

Roger Ball!, Odyssey of a Navy Fighter Pilot is available to order here.

Donald AutenDonald E. Auten, a native of Southern California, graduated from Long Beach State University and Salve Regina University, receiving a Master of Science degree and the Naval War College, where he earned a Master of Arts in National Security and Strategic Studies. Although originally trained as a light-attack pilot, he graduated from TOPGUN fighter and adversary courses and became an adversary instructor pilot in four adversary commands. In the course of seventeen years of training and operational flying, Donald completed six squadron assignments and logged nearly five thousand hours. He retired from the Navy as a Captain (O-6) following a twenty-seven-year career and completed several staff postings on both coasts, and a three-year assignment at the Pentagon as a Joint Strategic Plans Officer and two commanding officer assignments: Commanding Officer of VFC-12 and Commanding Officer of Naval Air Reserve, San Diego. Following his release from active duty Don was worked at Commander, Naval Special Warfare Command (SEALs) in Coronado, Ca, as a Future Force Planner. He makes his home in Etna, Wyoming with his wife, Katherine Sullivan Auten and their crème Labrador, Megan. Donald is the author of “Roger Ball!, Odyssey of a Navy Fighter Pilot”, “Alika, Odyssey of a Navy Dolphin”, and “Black Lion ONE”.

Donald Auten: All articles

How an Air Force F-15 got a Gulf War air-to-air kill with a bomb

How an F-15 scored an air-to-air kill by dropping a bomb on an enemy helicopter

How an F-15 scored an air-to-air kill by dropping a bomb on an enemy helicopter

Not your typical air-to-air kill.

Jeff Schogol

Posted on Jul 7, 2022

A F-15E Eagle aircraft takes off on a mission during Operation Desert Shield. (DOD)

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U.S. military aviators won several impressive air-to-air engagements during the Gulf War, but perhaps the most stunning victory happened on Feb. 14, 1991, when two airmen in an F-15 successfully dropped a bomb on Iraqi helicopter that was in the air.

Air Force Capt. Tim “Rhino” Bennett was hunting Scud missiles near Al-Qa’im in northwestern Iraq — much further north than where any other coalition aircraft were operating — when he and his weapons system officer Capt. Dan “Chewy” Bakke got word that an American special operations forces team had been discovered and was under attack from Iraqi helicopters.

It was early morning, long before dawn, and the weather was bad as Bennett took the plane low so that Bakke could find the Iraqi helicopters with the F-15’s targeting pod, Bennett told Task & Purpose. As soon as they were at an altitude between 1,500 and 2,000 feet, they could see the Iraqis and “a lot of shooting.”

Air Force Capt. Tim Bennett flew this F-15E on Feb. 14, 1991 on a mission to defend a U.S. special operations team from Iraqi troops and helicopters. (Photo courtesy of Tim Bennett.)

“Basically, they had this group of special ops guys surrounded,” Bennett said. “And the helicopters were moving. You could see them flying around. It’s so bright up under there with all the muzzle flashes, the shooting going on, you could see there’s troops all around them.”

It looked like the helicopters were transporting Iraqi troops to attack the American special operators, Bennett said.

His plane was not armed with any long-range AIM-7 Sparrow missiles, which are guided by radar and effective up to 6 miles, because at the time F-15Es could not be configured to carry both bombs and Sparrows, he said.

“If I had had AIM-7s on board, we would have shot them with that a little bit further away,” Bennett said.

Instead, his plane was carrying four GBU-10 bombs, each weighing 2,000 pounds, and four short-range AIM-9 Sidewinder heat-seeking missiles. With those weapons at his disposal, Bennett came up with an idea.

“I’m thinking: Hey, let’s let a bomb go — because they were already danger close, and they were all getting shot up,” Bennett said. “If they’re sitting on the ground, we’ll hit the helicopter. If not, it will give them something to think about and get their attention away from these guys.”

Bakke targeted an Iraqi Mi-24 Hind helicopter on the ground with a laser-guided bomb while Bennett maneuvered the F-15 for the attack. After the bomb was released, Bennett suddenly saw on his radar that the helicopter had taken off again.

A Mi-24 ‘Hind’ helicopter simulates an attack while being scoped by a Dutch Stinger Missile Platoon (HUM Images/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

With the helicopter back in the air, Bennett and Bakke no longer knew how long it would take for the bomb to reach its target. The time estimated for the bomb to strike the helicopter came and went. Nothing happened, but Bennett told Bakke to keep the laser spotter on the Hind.

“Maybe three to five seconds later, as I’m turning in to re-execute the attack from a different azimuth, the bomb — we’re so close, you can see the resolution very well — you could see it hit the helicopter,” Bennett said. “We had delayed fuzes on those things, so that when we hit a Scud or a Scud site, it would penetrate and then blow up. I think we had a 0.25-second delay on the bombs. So, really the bomb blew up right below the helicopter as it went through it. There weren’t even little pieces of it. It was a great hit.”

By a stroke of luck, the helicopter had flown toward the F-15, allowing the bomb to find its target, Bennett explained. If the Hind had gone in any other direction, the bomb would not have had been able to reach it.

An E-3 Sentry Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) conducts a mission, Oct. 4, 2019 at an undisclosed location. (Senior Airman Roslyn Ward/U.S. Air Force)

But any elation that Bennett and Bakke might have felt quickly dissipated when a U.S. service member aboard an E-3 Airborne Warning and Control System aircraft asked them if they had visually identified the target first to make sure it was not an American helicopter.

The U.S. military was flying special operators from Syria into Iraq in MH-53 Pave Low helicopters at the time, Bennett said. Since it was night, Bennett had seen an infrared image of the Iraqi helicopter. It looked like a Hind, but suddenly he started to wonder if it could have been a Pave Low instead.

Bennett said that he and Bakke marked the area where the helicopter was destroyed in case it turned out to be friendly and the U.S. military needed to launch a combat search and rescue mission for survivors, but they both knew “nobody was living in that.”

“It scared the shit out of both of us, when she asked that,” Bennett said. Thankfully, it turned out that Bennett was correct: It was an Iraqi Mi-24 Hind, not a friendly helicopter. “Within about five minutes, we knew that we didn’t have any helicopters up — it seemed like about five hours.”

Bennett left active duty after the Gulf War, but he flew F-16s with the South Carolina Air National Guard until he retired as a lieutenant colonel five years ago. His advice for young fighter pilots today is to train hard to face the highest threats that they may have to fly against.  

“My personal opinion is we’ve gotten too used to flying around at medium altitude a lot and you rely on GPS [Global Positioning System] a lot and things that can help you out — but can be taken away too,” Bennett said. “That’s a long, drawn-out way of saying: Always, always try to develop your fighter pilot skills. The truth is it will always be — it should always be — a business where you’ve just got to be aggressive because your job is to max-perform the airplane.”

[백선호]

느린 항공기가 빠른 항공기의 공격을 받을 때 대응 전술은 맞서서 head-on으로 서로 쏘는 것이라는 것이 헬리콥터에도 똑같이 적용되었네요.

[위종민]

실전에서 벌어진 적은 없었던 것 같은데, 진짜 저런 교전이 벌어졌다면 진풍경이긴 했겠네요 ㅎㅎㅎ