Crookfur wrote:Gallia- wrote:What is Mi-26 actually used for? Like ok, it's a big helicopter. So what? Why do you need a helicopter this big as opposed to something like CH-47 or even CH-54? What did Russian planners have in mind when they asked for a 20 tonne lift capacity? BMD-2? A pair of them? I'm trying to figure it out because the USA had Advanced Cargo Aircraft and AMT which were both supposed to lift FCS tankettes, so they needed similar h o i s t to Mi-26, but I'm still not sure why Mi-26 exists. I'm not sure where I should stop with Galla's air assault troops, basically.
Is there just a benefit to having really big HLHs as opposed to more of smaller HLH like Chinook or Tarhe?
Was ACA the only machine that could lift a HMMWV + M119 + crew + ammo? Can Chinook not do this? Chief Engineer C. Jaran talks about medium lift helos like Chinook requiring almost 10 lifts for an 8-ship company to move all their cargo, presumably guns and ammo, over a few hundred miles distance. Being able to hoist all this in one or two loads is a huge gain, especially internally.
So if I want to hoist a towed gun battery of HMMWVs and M119s (this is highly relevant, because this is the core basis of Galla's air assault artillery, besides mortars) then I need something as big as Halo/ACA to hoist this? That could be a compelling reason for Galla to use ACA I suppose. I don't know what the internal footprint of M119 + HMMWV + crew + ammo is.
Assumptions are the HMMWV is non-armored. An M1069 Prime Mover with ammo rack maxed out (I don't know how many rounds or propellant charges sorry) and gun crew seated external to the truck and gun, with the gun hitched for RO/RO onload/offload at an LZ. Five to six gun crewmen per gun. Maybe an 8 ship strength company.
IIRC it was to lift BMPs and/or ballistic missiles from airfields to remote locations and do it at fairly high altitudes. IMHO it's probably the need to distribute bigger missiles to remote firing locations that drove things rather than the need to.lift BMPs that seems to have been added fairly far along.
The carrying of roughly company sized blocks of light infantry seems to have been something that came later.
The US Army seems to have added infantry company blocks from the start. Or Sikorsky did.
But basically Mi-26 isn't a tactical weapon but like, an Air Force/Strategic Rocket Force support ship?
I suppose that makes sense, like the Saturn V recovery helicopter or whatever but sensible.
Are gigacopters useful for tactical units like infantry brigades and battalions conducting air assaults?
The rubric described by Chief Engineer Jaran seems inherently biased towards super heavy gigacopters, probably by design, but it's also implied to be a US Army tool. So really I'm just wondering how useful it is to lift a gun battery in a single assault lift rather than two or three.
https://dl.dropbox.com/s/5qx6y1nkzaxh7i ... n.pdf?dl=0