Heliborne assault viable in conventional high intensity conflict

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Member for

13 years 6 months

Posts: 2,120

The heliborne assault was pioneered in the 1960s and has been used since in operations to great effect - in Vietnam (as shown in great "We Were Soldiers" movie), Operation Rhodes in 1970 War of Attrition, Indian operations in Sri Lanka and wars in Africa (Rhodesian K-CAR ops, Portuguese forces in Angola etc.

However most of these ops were in counter insurgency operations or at least against foes without much in the way of air defence.

Against massed choppers even such primitive systems as manually trained 14.5mm/12.7mm machine guns can be effective let alone AAA and MANPADS.

So is heliborne assault viable in a conventional high intensity conflict with large amounts of air defence present, or is it primarily a special forces/raiding type operation better suited for COIN or poorly defended sectors or for initial surprise assaults?

Indeed even in COIN the results can be disastrous as is the example of the destruction of 38th DR Afghanistan Brigade and loss of 24 helicopters at 2nd Battle of Zhawar in 1986.

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Member for

13 years 11 months

Posts: 889

the usual theory goes that the enemy has to have his head down, usually enforced by fast jets and arty for heliborne insertion to work. even then it would need an element of surprise and speed.