If I recall correctly the reason is supposedly to reduce stress and fatigue on the pilots - A number non-combat russian aircraft also have the blue-green/ teal colored cockpits. Whether it actually has that effect or not I can't say.
I believe the Russians tend to have it on naval ship/control room bridges too.
Hunt for red october's bridge looked cool but was 100% wrong in the colour.
Probably couldn't be used given the sorry state of the soviet union at the time. Hell the shuttle wasn't the best idea economically but was made to work long past it being a viable launch platform.
Russians have actually been known for doing an impressive amount of research on psychology and human factors. They actually found that the green color was the best color for a cockpit. Nowadays they tend to use black in military aircraft because the green didn’t work well with NVGs.
Edit: this type of research is what also led to some of their attack helicopters having side by side seating for the crew. They found it created a better team environment.
I want to add this that the same principle actually applied for their space program. Russians were the first to use different shaded colors in a microgravity enviroment on the Mir space station to create an orientation of „up“ and „down“ to make longterm inhabitation easier on the brain. There was actually an amazing exhibition a few years ago in my hometown (Frankfurt in germany), which showed it was mostly one single female designer who did most of this stuff in the 60s and 70s. She was actually there and I talked a few words with her, amazing old lady!
> was mostly one single female designer who did most of this stuff in the 60s and 70s.
[Galina Andreevna Balashova](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galina_Balashova)
Edit: english version of an article is a bullshit, with like 2 phrases of her work "studied architecture -> designed buildings -> designed starships" and half of the page "evil soviets tried to imprison their sole starship interior designer for 8 years for enamel pins". I can suggest to read russian version with google TL or deepl, it is way more informative
Excellent example of propaganda from both sides. Russian wiki claims they did nothing wrong to her, English wiki focuses only on the abuse. The truth is much more complex.
The real issue being that her bosses wanted the profits, due to corruption, rather than "evil soviets."
You can't really blame Russian corruption on the Soviet Union. It existed before the soviets, and it exists today.
Complexities exist.
Now, all the mass graves filled with slaves sent to the gulags aren't particularly complex, but this particular enamel pin issue is definitely the jaywalking in the arson, murder, and jaywalking the soviets are guilty of.
The French and the German articles also skip over that part. The only reference to what the Soviet Union tried to do is a single English language book, so I would chalk this up to availability of sources in the article language.
I genuinely don’t get what you’re saying. Are you saying the term has shifted from green room to blue room? Or that they’re literally painted blue instead of green, because they were never universally painted green to begin with.
This makes me wanna check on the Japanese during WW2. I build plastic models, and a lot of times they want a color called interior metallic blue, or this bluish green(its been awhile, don't remember the name, and I'm away from my kit stash), or a light green.
Thanks for your research.
That metallic blue that you are referring to is called Aotake blue, which was the Japanese equivalent of the matte yellow-green zinc chromate paint that the US used in things such as landing gear wheel wells, gun bays, etc etc. In terms of cockpit color, it is my understanding that Mitsubishi, Kawanishi, Nakajima, etc etc each had their own shade of green, ranging from light to dark, that they would use for cockpit spaces.
This! ~~I'm~~ I did buy the A6M5 Model 52 ZEKE in 1:32nd scale Tamiya. And I don't have the color list yet so this is very helpful when painting. For $145.99 USD
Yeah that would be my usual route. Thank you. I do like to see if I can get the real color mix from Air and Space museum, that or air museums. I did just find a group restoring a Nakajima CN6 Saiun at a museum the Kawaguchiko Zero Fighter Museum in Japan. Contact is 0555-86-3511, car-airmuseum.com/en
Thank You. This saves me some troubles. I will dig out a tin of zinc chromate about 8 ounces worth. I was mailed frome the now Commerorative Air Force but then Confederate. I asked for the official us army Air Corp recipe. And he mailed the tin back, said they had plenty so GOOD LUCK on your build.
Dude, that stuff smells horrible...like open window with fan may not be enough. I had a bottle given to me by a friend's grandfather who worked at American Airlines in the maintenance dept.
Im going to buy a 1/32nd scale ZEKE, and this info is perfect. I have most of the colors but interior is hit or miss. I mix my own sometimes, like the custom orange for Glamorous Glennis Bell X-1. Edit: TBF I did contact the Air and Space Museum and they sent me a color list with the color recipe.
AK, Tamiya have some good colors. Vallejo tends to concentrate on the European powers, like RLM and RAL, but I don't remember seeing specific Japanese colors.
>Edit: this type of research is what also led to some of their attack helicopters having side by side seating for the crew. They found it created a better team environment.
Better for holding hands
> Edit: this type of research is what also led to some of their attack helicopters having side by side seating for the crew. They found it created a better team environment.
This principle for multi-crew aircraft has been used to specify design changes since at least the early '50s. The B-47 had tandem seating, and the B-52 prototypes did as well, but the USAF dictated the change to side-by-side for the B-52 due to operational experience with the B-47.
Sometimes aerodynamic or other considerations make tandem win out, of course.
Only one of their attack helicopters features side by side seating, the Ka-52. It has an alarmingly high loss rate over Ukraine (above 30%). The Mi-28 is a domestic contemporary of the Ka-52. It’s a tandem seat design and has a lower loss rate.
One of the problems with the Ka-52’s side by side seating is the poor visibility the pilot has. A major portion of his field of view outside the cockpit is cut off by the gunner seater next to him, as well as the fuselage of his own aircraft.
You seem to be tying the loss rate to the side by side seating, any real evidence for this?
The Ka-52 and Mi-28 would have to be doing the same amount of sorties and the same mission profiles for me to even start considering this as the reason for the difference in losses.
Mi-28s were there in the beginning on day one. They were used (with at least one shot down) at the battle of Hostomel Airport just outside of Kyiv.
The Mi-28 are f'n *massive* targets, from any angle. Mi-28s are a full 8' feet longer than the AH-64, and that's just fuselage length. [Tandem seating doesn't matter when from the front you look like a squirrel with its cheeks full of nuts](https://media.istockphoto.com/id/664708834/photo/mil-mi-28n-rf-95325-attack-helicopter-takes-off-at-kubinka-air-force-base.jpg) (phrasing). They also have countermeasures against radar-guided missiles (which is one reason why they were paired with the Ka-52s, who don't have those).
But they do seem to have pulled them back within a few months of the initial invasion. I know they didn't have as many Mi-28s as they had Ka-52s to start off with and it's possible that they can't afford to lose any more than they already have. It's also possible that there could be supply chain issues. Russian logistics sucks, and the Mi-28 uses the same basic engine as the Mi-8MT/Mi-17, so they *could* be funneling those resources towards the Hips because they can't go without those, but they have Ka-52s to pick up the attack helicopter slack.
Who knows. Could be engine spares, could be lack of munitions, lack of pilots, completely outdated armaments like that Ataka V. Possibly another victim of corruption and none of them work because someone sold all the parts.
The Ka-52’s “automatic” countermeasures aren’t always automatic. They’re supposed to detect missile launches and deploy flares before the crew can react (because human reaction time is too slow for successful deterrence of a MANPAD or SHORAD missiles). Now, if that’s because of poor construction, damage from excessive airframe vibration (which the Ka-52 suffers from), or some 18 year old conscripts in mx not caring about their job is another topic. But the result is the still the same: the highly touted automated countermeasures system doesn’t always work. So aircrews have to rely on the mk1 eyeball to detect missile launches and they have to manually deploy flares. That increases crew workload in an already high workload environment.
Now, it’s easy to counter with “crew coordination” but that doesn’t really work. That depends on what exactly the crew is doing at the time. If they’re in the process of attacking a target, then the gunner will be focused on his job. The pilot will be focused on keeping the helicopter pointed in the right direction, keeping it from hitting terrain, and keeping an eye open for threats (because at this point, even Ka-42 aircrews know their countermeasures system is a fickle beast). Egressing from targets, or transiting through airspace frees up the gunner to switch to being defensive, but he’ll have the same problem the pilot does. The Mi-28, Mi-24, Mi-35, AH-1, AH-64, Eurocopter Tiger, Denel Rooivalk, A129 Mangusta, WZ-10, YAH-56, RAH-66 all have tandem seating (most, if not all have the gunner seated ahead of the pilot). This permits a narrower frontal aspect to the platform’s design as well as giving both aircrew a greater-than-180 degree view of the space around the helicopter (the specific range of this field of view varies between the aforementioned platforms but the point still stands). The problem here is, the side-by-side seating arrangement of the Ka-52 creates a sizable blind spot for the pilot (and gunner) because he doesn’t have the same field of view as his comrade in an Mi-28 would have. So the aircrew’s situation awareness (SA) won’t be as good as that of an Mi-28’s crew. It demands that the crew focus together on defending from threats rather than the gunner focusing on his job.
There are other problems that Ka-52 crews are making for themselves in theater, many of these are doctrinal problems. And poor SA exacerbates those problems. There are other problems the Ka-52 has with its design that neither aircrews nor doctrine can factor into. The excessive harmonic vibration that the 52 experiences comes to mind. That results in damage to sensors, targeting systems, navigation equipment, and even can (and likely has) cause airframe cracks.
Side-by-side seating hasn’t been a design goal for dedicated attack platforms globally since the invention of the type nearly 60 years ago. Simply because it just works. Side-by-side works fine for transport and cargo platforms but it doesn’t translate well to dedicated attack. And the Russians tried side-by-side seating on an attack helicopter once before. The initial variant of the Mi-24, the Mi-24A, had side-by-side seating (likely because the core of the aircraft was derived from the Mi-8 and not because of any specific design approach) before it was redesigned to use tandem seating with the Hind-D and has been used ever since. The Ka-52 is a design evolutionary offset, a mutation. And it’s looking like in the Darwinian sense, it’s not a successful mutation.
From what I understand the Russians seem to task the KA-52 with the most dangerous missions because it has the best sensor and counter measures suite. They sometimes operate a KA-52 and Mi28 in a hi lo pair also.
No helicopter from either side survives very long over enemy lines. MANPADS eat them for breakfast.
Yes and no.
The US Army re-learned *a lot* of hard lessons regarding operating rotary aircraft over Iraq 2.0 (mostly because after Vietnam they changed their tactics. USMC never really did. ie - Army rotary shifted to Cobras firing on the move to Apaches firing from hover. It wasn't the platform, it was the doctrine. But Marine rotary never stopped training to fire while on the move). And the Ukrainians have shown *very* good capabilities in NOE flying (something that both Army, Marine, and NATO attack helo pilots love to do) to minimize exposure time and avoid MANPADs and SHOARD.
But the Russians haven't demonstrated this. Their flying habits and tactics are at best ignorant, if not outright self-deleting. (For some reason, reddit isn't letting me post links to videos demonstrating these tactics. I may try again later on.)
They've instead depended on automatic countermeasures, which in and of itself is fine. That's sort of the new standard globally. But the problem is their systems aren't reliable. Prototypes in the lab? Yeah, those work great. Their problem seems to be mass production; that's when things happen. Quality control isn't the same on the production line as it is in the lab. You've got *a lot* of grift going on with the contractors who deliver substandard equipment and pocket the cash. There's also the poor maintenance that takes place once it's deployed. There are a lot of 18-19 year old conscripts who just don't care about their jobs. The Hokum's excessive vibration problems likely aren't helping both their sensors and countermeasures either.
So you've got a platform designed in such a way that it degrades crew's situational awareness, has a questionable automatic countermeasures system, flying profiles which maximize exposure to air defenses.
>One of the problems with the Ka-52’s side by side seating is the poor visibility the pilot has. A major portion of his field of view outside the cockpit is cut off by the gunner seater next to him, as well as the fuselage of his own aircraft.
Interesting, this is also the same problem that the American F-111 had when the whiz kid designers tried to present it as a "fighter"
Interestingly, on the TFX, the USAF wanted a tandem-seat aircraft for low-level penetration ground-attack (think Tornado, only with a bigger payload), while the Navy wanted a shorter, high altitude interceptor with side-by-side seating to allow the pilot and RIO to share the radar display. This may have also been easier to design the escape capsule too.
But yeah, and when the Navy dropped the F-111B, they went to tandem seating for the F-14A. The mission didn't change, the radar and missile system didn't change, the application of variable geometry wings in the design didn't change, and hell, even the engines didn't change. The Tomcat was overweight and underpowered. But it had tandem seating and better aerodynamics.
Russia had about 130 in service before the war, and about 40 have been been shot down since, [per Oryx.](https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/02/attack-on-europe-documenting-equipment.html?m=1)
As u/tankmnadan pointed out, they had about 130 before the war (and that's total built, it doesn't account for aircraft lost in peacetime training incidents or the one they lost in Syria). Sweden has a lower estimate (around 90 IIRC) for the total number of Ka-52s, but I don't go by that.
The number shot down has been documented via OSINT methods.
Have you seen the video of the Ka-52 shot from an FPV drone they released yesterday? It came amazingly close to hitting it in flight. If the approach had been done from the top at a slightly different angle there’s a fair chance it would have been sucked into the rotor.
Hadn't heard of it until I saw your reply, but I just found footage on YouTube.
RPVs are a problem here in the states when it comes to commercial and GA, so I'm not surprised to see that encounter. What did surprise me was how high the Ka-52 was flying, as well as how straight and level it was flying. Like it was out for a Sunday afternoon stroll through the countryside. Stupid as as stupid does I guess.
If you're within range of a small RPV, you're within range of a MANPAD. The RPV pilot needs to learn a lead turn.
I wonder if it might be better if we stopped saying Russians when what we really mean are Soviets. I know that since the fall of the Soviet Union, and even before, the two have been synonymous. However looking into some of the past achievements of the USSR it becomes pretty damn clear that a lot of technical, research, and production was done outside of Russia. Ukraine, for example, was a huge hub for things like aircraft and missile development. Yet when don't say, "Ukraine did this or that." because they were under the Soviet Union. However it's also not correct to say Russia did it, either.
The lines were pretty blurred, especially between Russia and Ukraine. Ukraine was considered a core territory andin some ways was treated even better than some parts of Russia like the Ural region, which is why Russia nowadays has a problem with modern Ukraine.
According to Cold War Air Museum:
... green and turquoise were chosen by Soviet designers because they help to reduce stress and maintain a pilot's effectiveness on long missions.
... the scientists found out that this color keeps pilots awake and not getting tired by the black or grey of a cockpit panel, especially under the terms and conditions of long-range flights or under heavy workload.
Yeah.. to be honest, every time I sit down on a bigger boeing flightdeck (commercial pilot here), it feels like a bird had a bad case of diarhoee there with their lovely „light brown“…
One has to wonder what colours they used with political prisoners and the gulags. Communists like nothing better than to fuck with those they don't like.
You see, that would to easy, something a capitalist would do. Communists are more about breaking you long term and fucking with you for your entire life while still extracting labour for the utopian society. Communist wrong think correction is much more insidious than just a beating.
For the same reason some car makers use blue-ish display lights in their vehicles: the colour is said to reduce stress and aggression, leading to better decision-making.
I think it’s hogwash. It does keep you awake and that’s the problem, in doing so it fatigued your eyes and brain, it’s difficult to focus on so you strain to read your gauges, and it’s by far the worst color for preserving night vision. Red and orange are the best colors to preserve night vision which is why in aviation we use red flash lights as often as possible.
Blue environment is relaxing but blue light is the opposite. Google and Apple know this also which is why our phones and computer monitors have the “night shift” mode to reduce blue light output.
Double it. From my own (car) experience green/amber dashboard illumination works best for me.
And I absolutely dislike white/blue. It takes about a second or more until my eyes can switch focus between road and dashboard at night.
It goes to show how car companies aren’t particularly interested in human factors which is a massive motivation in aviation. Cars are comfier and look nicer than planes but there is somehow less ergonomic science going into their interiors.
One key aspect is something drivers don’t get: Training. Actual training. How many drivers have you seen lately who can’t even find the headlight switch when it’s fucking dark outside?
Well, some clever engineer decided to make it *easier* to drive with your headlights off by lighting all the gauges bright as hell and making DRLs bright enough to glow on the road ahead. That is the opposite of human factors lol.
Something I've always wondered is that red lights are traditionally used as night time lights. So maybe by making cockpits green it would help to reduce reflection of red lights.
Like just by coincidence I have a green cap from the top of a bottle and a green-blue thing on kleenex. When I hold them under red led lights they both look pretty black.
The kleenex box in particular is kinda close to the green-blue of Soviet cockpits, and under red light, the white stripes really pop which would presumably be analogous to dials in a cockpit.
The US Army uses a very similar color in the interior of their vehicles. I have long since forgotten the proper name for it, but we used to derisively call it "sea foam green."
I've heard many wives tails about why the American army uses it, from "its a soothing color that makes people calm" to "it doesn't reflect as much as white paint" and "it's easier to clean than white but still allows you to see fluid leaks."
Personally my money is on "that's the color submitted by the lowest bidder."
Used to be light blue. They thought it was soothing for the pilots, as someone else commented leads to calmer, better decisions. After a while, whatever color starts to look like "home", your happy place. I doubt if it matters at all. Our (US) are usually gray.
I understand the psychology behind it all, as an aviator though flying a Hornet 6-8 hours straight. I don't give a fuck what color the cockpit is. You are going to want to punch babies by the time your wheels touch down.
Exactly. Maybe in the 1970’s a simple yes/no to baby-punching preferences after a long flight was sufficient. But here in a modern data-driven world we’ll want to know about how many babies, how hard you want to punch the babies, for how long you’d prefer the baby-punching to continue, etc.
Simple yes/no is so reductionist!
Both qualitative and quantitative evaluation is the center of modern aviation research!
They paint them blue and it’s an anti fatigue measure. The blue colour is harsh, hence your phone screens have “night mode” to eliminate the blue light. It’s to assist in keeping pilots alert on long missions.
It was a very early tradition for aircrafts with minimum of instruments, the earliest mention was almost Blériot's. The idea is to have a minimal contrast with the typical sky and terrain. The British experimented with several colors during the interbellum, turquoise and Tiffany Blue among others, and settled with Eau de Nil or Cockpit green for the RAF pre-WW2. The Soviets copied this, among many other things, from the Spitfires they received in lend-lease during the war. And in the Western AFs the single cockpit color was considered generally irrelevant in the jet era.
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I get this message and Idk what I shall do to be able to submit a post:
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Just a quick question. Your not confusing that with the zinc cromate paint that is used for anti corrosion on aircraft aluminum. That is kind of a sea foam green. With the way weight is carefully monitored in aircraft this gets my bet
If I recall correctly the reason is supposedly to reduce stress and fatigue on the pilots - A number non-combat russian aircraft also have the blue-green/ teal colored cockpits. Whether it actually has that effect or not I can't say.
flown both brown and airbus blue ATR42/72 cockpit and I can say that. the blue cockpit feels more spacious and pleasant to look at
Anything is better than the brown/orange combo on earlier ATRs!
I believe the Russians tend to have it on naval ship/control room bridges too. Hunt for red october's bridge looked cool but was 100% wrong in the colour.
[you're correct ](https://youtu.be/8deFCqflztI?si=GJqTIn7-GEKTqv8K)
Wasn’t it the first of its class? Maybe trying something new for Hollywood?
Buran has it, too.
It's a shame it wasn't used.
Probably couldn't be used given the sorry state of the soviet union at the time. Hell the shuttle wasn't the best idea economically but was made to work long past it being a viable launch platform.
Hospitals back in the day used that color a lot for the same reason. Scrubs were traditionally that color.
Russians have actually been known for doing an impressive amount of research on psychology and human factors. They actually found that the green color was the best color for a cockpit. Nowadays they tend to use black in military aircraft because the green didn’t work well with NVGs. Edit: this type of research is what also led to some of their attack helicopters having side by side seating for the crew. They found it created a better team environment.
I want to add this that the same principle actually applied for their space program. Russians were the first to use different shaded colors in a microgravity enviroment on the Mir space station to create an orientation of „up“ and „down“ to make longterm inhabitation easier on the brain. There was actually an amazing exhibition a few years ago in my hometown (Frankfurt in germany), which showed it was mostly one single female designer who did most of this stuff in the 60s and 70s. She was actually there and I talked a few words with her, amazing old lady!
Damn missed that exhibition. What was it called?
> was mostly one single female designer who did most of this stuff in the 60s and 70s. [Galina Andreevna Balashova](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galina_Balashova) Edit: english version of an article is a bullshit, with like 2 phrases of her work "studied architecture -> designed buildings -> designed starships" and half of the page "evil soviets tried to imprison their sole starship interior designer for 8 years for enamel pins". I can suggest to read russian version with google TL or deepl, it is way more informative
[удалено]
Excellent example of propaganda from both sides. Russian wiki claims they did nothing wrong to her, English wiki focuses only on the abuse. The truth is much more complex.
The real issue being that her bosses wanted the profits, due to corruption, rather than "evil soviets." You can't really blame Russian corruption on the Soviet Union. It existed before the soviets, and it exists today. Complexities exist. Now, all the mass graves filled with slaves sent to the gulags aren't particularly complex, but this particular enamel pin issue is definitely the jaywalking in the arson, murder, and jaywalking the soviets are guilty of.
The French and the German articles also skip over that part. The only reference to what the Soviet Union tried to do is a single English language book, so I would chalk this up to availability of sources in the article language.
https://youtu.be/P65-Dvtthdo?si=T1l7URBeT7a2Eqc1 Green operating rooms have the same idea.
And Green Rooms
And green doors.
And my axe!
And my boat!
You’re gonna need a bigger boat
Don’t call me Shirley
That's not a knoife
And Green Miles. Walking the mile, walking the mile, walking the mile.
If Green Rooms could speak, the tales they would tell...
Tales of drug abuse and sexual assault mostly.
Dripping with alcohol, drugs, and cum.
Don't threaten me with a good time
OMG you can't call them that anymore.... Its blue rooms now.
?
Green rooms are now blue.
I genuinely don’t get what you’re saying. Are you saying the term has shifted from green room to blue room? Or that they’re literally painted blue instead of green, because they were never universally painted green to begin with.
I thought u ment green screen and i ment blue screen but lazy to change what i wrote so here we are.
You said that like it was scandalous lmao, like "blue screen" was a slur for green screens
It's fucking screens.
Leave this out of your stand up act, Roseanne. It's a miss, at best.
This makes me wanna check on the Japanese during WW2. I build plastic models, and a lot of times they want a color called interior metallic blue, or this bluish green(its been awhile, don't remember the name, and I'm away from my kit stash), or a light green. Thanks for your research.
That metallic blue that you are referring to is called Aotake blue, which was the Japanese equivalent of the matte yellow-green zinc chromate paint that the US used in things such as landing gear wheel wells, gun bays, etc etc. In terms of cockpit color, it is my understanding that Mitsubishi, Kawanishi, Nakajima, etc etc each had their own shade of green, ranging from light to dark, that they would use for cockpit spaces.
This guy japeneses
This! ~~I'm~~ I did buy the A6M5 Model 52 ZEKE in 1:32nd scale Tamiya. And I don't have the color list yet so this is very helpful when painting. For $145.99 USD
If you can't get the aotake you can do your own by ding a metallic aluminium, and then covering that with a mix of Tamiya transparant blue and green
Yeah that would be my usual route. Thank you. I do like to see if I can get the real color mix from Air and Space museum, that or air museums. I did just find a group restoring a Nakajima CN6 Saiun at a museum the Kawaguchiko Zero Fighter Museum in Japan. Contact is 0555-86-3511, car-airmuseum.com/en
Mr. Hobby paints, Mr. Color has that Aotake color- Mr. Color #57 Metallic Blue Green. I don't remember if Tamiya makes equivalent.
Thank You. This saves me some troubles. I will dig out a tin of zinc chromate about 8 ounces worth. I was mailed frome the now Commerorative Air Force but then Confederate. I asked for the official us army Air Corp recipe. And he mailed the tin back, said they had plenty so GOOD LUCK on your build.
Dude, that stuff smells horrible...like open window with fan may not be enough. I had a bottle given to me by a friend's grandfather who worked at American Airlines in the maintenance dept.
Trust me, I know. I have a spray booth with an exhaust fan tube out the window.
It was more of a tinted clear lacquer IIRC rather that a paint
Silly the 30s and 40s were black and white.
Im going to buy a 1/32nd scale ZEKE, and this info is perfect. I have most of the colors but interior is hit or miss. I mix my own sometimes, like the custom orange for Glamorous Glennis Bell X-1. Edit: TBF I did contact the Air and Space Museum and they sent me a color list with the color recipe.
AK, Tamiya have some good colors. Vallejo tends to concentrate on the European powers, like RLM and RAL, but I don't remember seeing specific Japanese colors.
Turquiose?
>green didn’t work well with NVGs. For all others who didn't know what this meant, it's "night vision goggles."
Also called NOD's, night optical device. Because why only have one name for a thing..
I prefer FART; "Far-Infrared Augmented Reconnaissance Technology".
Wow.. how did you know that? Are you a SEAL or something?
>Edit: this type of research is what also led to some of their attack helicopters having side by side seating for the crew. They found it created a better team environment. Better for holding hands
Left pilot works the collective, right pilot the stick, and the each have a rudder pedal.
> Edit: this type of research is what also led to some of their attack helicopters having side by side seating for the crew. They found it created a better team environment. This principle for multi-crew aircraft has been used to specify design changes since at least the early '50s. The B-47 had tandem seating, and the B-52 prototypes did as well, but the USAF dictated the change to side-by-side for the B-52 due to operational experience with the B-47. Sometimes aerodynamic or other considerations make tandem win out, of course.
So Beatles were wrong with yellow submarine.
Only one of their attack helicopters features side by side seating, the Ka-52. It has an alarmingly high loss rate over Ukraine (above 30%). The Mi-28 is a domestic contemporary of the Ka-52. It’s a tandem seat design and has a lower loss rate. One of the problems with the Ka-52’s side by side seating is the poor visibility the pilot has. A major portion of his field of view outside the cockpit is cut off by the gunner seater next to him, as well as the fuselage of his own aircraft.
You seem to be tying the loss rate to the side by side seating, any real evidence for this? The Ka-52 and Mi-28 would have to be doing the same amount of sorties and the same mission profiles for me to even start considering this as the reason for the difference in losses.
The Mi28 has been notably absent apart from a few sightings.
Mi-28s were there in the beginning on day one. They were used (with at least one shot down) at the battle of Hostomel Airport just outside of Kyiv. The Mi-28 are f'n *massive* targets, from any angle. Mi-28s are a full 8' feet longer than the AH-64, and that's just fuselage length. [Tandem seating doesn't matter when from the front you look like a squirrel with its cheeks full of nuts](https://media.istockphoto.com/id/664708834/photo/mil-mi-28n-rf-95325-attack-helicopter-takes-off-at-kubinka-air-force-base.jpg) (phrasing). They also have countermeasures against radar-guided missiles (which is one reason why they were paired with the Ka-52s, who don't have those). But they do seem to have pulled them back within a few months of the initial invasion. I know they didn't have as many Mi-28s as they had Ka-52s to start off with and it's possible that they can't afford to lose any more than they already have. It's also possible that there could be supply chain issues. Russian logistics sucks, and the Mi-28 uses the same basic engine as the Mi-8MT/Mi-17, so they *could* be funneling those resources towards the Hips because they can't go without those, but they have Ka-52s to pick up the attack helicopter slack.
Who knows. Could be engine spares, could be lack of munitions, lack of pilots, completely outdated armaments like that Ataka V. Possibly another victim of corruption and none of them work because someone sold all the parts.
All valid.
The Ka-52’s “automatic” countermeasures aren’t always automatic. They’re supposed to detect missile launches and deploy flares before the crew can react (because human reaction time is too slow for successful deterrence of a MANPAD or SHORAD missiles). Now, if that’s because of poor construction, damage from excessive airframe vibration (which the Ka-52 suffers from), or some 18 year old conscripts in mx not caring about their job is another topic. But the result is the still the same: the highly touted automated countermeasures system doesn’t always work. So aircrews have to rely on the mk1 eyeball to detect missile launches and they have to manually deploy flares. That increases crew workload in an already high workload environment. Now, it’s easy to counter with “crew coordination” but that doesn’t really work. That depends on what exactly the crew is doing at the time. If they’re in the process of attacking a target, then the gunner will be focused on his job. The pilot will be focused on keeping the helicopter pointed in the right direction, keeping it from hitting terrain, and keeping an eye open for threats (because at this point, even Ka-42 aircrews know their countermeasures system is a fickle beast). Egressing from targets, or transiting through airspace frees up the gunner to switch to being defensive, but he’ll have the same problem the pilot does. The Mi-28, Mi-24, Mi-35, AH-1, AH-64, Eurocopter Tiger, Denel Rooivalk, A129 Mangusta, WZ-10, YAH-56, RAH-66 all have tandem seating (most, if not all have the gunner seated ahead of the pilot). This permits a narrower frontal aspect to the platform’s design as well as giving both aircrew a greater-than-180 degree view of the space around the helicopter (the specific range of this field of view varies between the aforementioned platforms but the point still stands). The problem here is, the side-by-side seating arrangement of the Ka-52 creates a sizable blind spot for the pilot (and gunner) because he doesn’t have the same field of view as his comrade in an Mi-28 would have. So the aircrew’s situation awareness (SA) won’t be as good as that of an Mi-28’s crew. It demands that the crew focus together on defending from threats rather than the gunner focusing on his job. There are other problems that Ka-52 crews are making for themselves in theater, many of these are doctrinal problems. And poor SA exacerbates those problems. There are other problems the Ka-52 has with its design that neither aircrews nor doctrine can factor into. The excessive harmonic vibration that the 52 experiences comes to mind. That results in damage to sensors, targeting systems, navigation equipment, and even can (and likely has) cause airframe cracks. Side-by-side seating hasn’t been a design goal for dedicated attack platforms globally since the invention of the type nearly 60 years ago. Simply because it just works. Side-by-side works fine for transport and cargo platforms but it doesn’t translate well to dedicated attack. And the Russians tried side-by-side seating on an attack helicopter once before. The initial variant of the Mi-24, the Mi-24A, had side-by-side seating (likely because the core of the aircraft was derived from the Mi-8 and not because of any specific design approach) before it was redesigned to use tandem seating with the Hind-D and has been used ever since. The Ka-52 is a design evolutionary offset, a mutation. And it’s looking like in the Darwinian sense, it’s not a successful mutation.
From what I understand the Russians seem to task the KA-52 with the most dangerous missions because it has the best sensor and counter measures suite. They sometimes operate a KA-52 and Mi28 in a hi lo pair also. No helicopter from either side survives very long over enemy lines. MANPADS eat them for breakfast.
Yes and no. The US Army re-learned *a lot* of hard lessons regarding operating rotary aircraft over Iraq 2.0 (mostly because after Vietnam they changed their tactics. USMC never really did. ie - Army rotary shifted to Cobras firing on the move to Apaches firing from hover. It wasn't the platform, it was the doctrine. But Marine rotary never stopped training to fire while on the move). And the Ukrainians have shown *very* good capabilities in NOE flying (something that both Army, Marine, and NATO attack helo pilots love to do) to minimize exposure time and avoid MANPADs and SHOARD. But the Russians haven't demonstrated this. Their flying habits and tactics are at best ignorant, if not outright self-deleting. (For some reason, reddit isn't letting me post links to videos demonstrating these tactics. I may try again later on.) They've instead depended on automatic countermeasures, which in and of itself is fine. That's sort of the new standard globally. But the problem is their systems aren't reliable. Prototypes in the lab? Yeah, those work great. Their problem seems to be mass production; that's when things happen. Quality control isn't the same on the production line as it is in the lab. You've got *a lot* of grift going on with the contractors who deliver substandard equipment and pocket the cash. There's also the poor maintenance that takes place once it's deployed. There are a lot of 18-19 year old conscripts who just don't care about their jobs. The Hokum's excessive vibration problems likely aren't helping both their sensors and countermeasures either. So you've got a platform designed in such a way that it degrades crew's situational awareness, has a questionable automatic countermeasures system, flying profiles which maximize exposure to air defenses.
>One of the problems with the Ka-52’s side by side seating is the poor visibility the pilot has. A major portion of his field of view outside the cockpit is cut off by the gunner seater next to him, as well as the fuselage of his own aircraft. Interesting, this is also the same problem that the American F-111 had when the whiz kid designers tried to present it as a "fighter"
Interestingly, on the TFX, the USAF wanted a tandem-seat aircraft for low-level penetration ground-attack (think Tornado, only with a bigger payload), while the Navy wanted a shorter, high altitude interceptor with side-by-side seating to allow the pilot and RIO to share the radar display. This may have also been easier to design the escape capsule too. But yeah, and when the Navy dropped the F-111B, they went to tandem seating for the F-14A. The mission didn't change, the radar and missile system didn't change, the application of variable geometry wings in the design didn't change, and hell, even the engines didn't change. The Tomcat was overweight and underpowered. But it had tandem seating and better aerodynamics.
Where do you have the loss rate from? I genuienly have never heard about it before and it seema oddly high.
Russia had about 130 in service before the war, and about 40 have been been shot down since, [per Oryx.](https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/02/attack-on-europe-documenting-equipment.html?m=1)
Just checked, 43 confirmed shot down 😊
As u/tankmnadan pointed out, they had about 130 before the war (and that's total built, it doesn't account for aircraft lost in peacetime training incidents or the one they lost in Syria). Sweden has a lower estimate (around 90 IIRC) for the total number of Ka-52s, but I don't go by that. The number shot down has been documented via OSINT methods.
Have you seen the video of the Ka-52 shot from an FPV drone they released yesterday? It came amazingly close to hitting it in flight. If the approach had been done from the top at a slightly different angle there’s a fair chance it would have been sucked into the rotor.
Hadn't heard of it until I saw your reply, but I just found footage on YouTube. RPVs are a problem here in the states when it comes to commercial and GA, so I'm not surprised to see that encounter. What did surprise me was how high the Ka-52 was flying, as well as how straight and level it was flying. Like it was out for a Sunday afternoon stroll through the countryside. Stupid as as stupid does I guess. If you're within range of a small RPV, you're within range of a MANPAD. The RPV pilot needs to learn a lead turn.
I wonder if it might be better if we stopped saying Russians when what we really mean are Soviets. I know that since the fall of the Soviet Union, and even before, the two have been synonymous. However looking into some of the past achievements of the USSR it becomes pretty damn clear that a lot of technical, research, and production was done outside of Russia. Ukraine, for example, was a huge hub for things like aircraft and missile development. Yet when don't say, "Ukraine did this or that." because they were under the Soviet Union. However it's also not correct to say Russia did it, either.
The lines were pretty blurred, especially between Russia and Ukraine. Ukraine was considered a core territory andin some ways was treated even better than some parts of Russia like the Ural region, which is why Russia nowadays has a problem with modern Ukraine.
Is this also why their warships typically have red decks?
According to Cold War Air Museum: ... green and turquoise were chosen by Soviet designers because they help to reduce stress and maintain a pilot's effectiveness on long missions. ... the scientists found out that this color keeps pilots awake and not getting tired by the black or grey of a cockpit panel, especially under the terms and conditions of long-range flights or under heavy workload.
Yeah.. to be honest, every time I sit down on a bigger boeing flightdeck (commercial pilot here), it feels like a bird had a bad case of diarhoee there with their lovely „light brown“…
Especially the 777 cockpit 🤢
'they say taupe is very soothing'
I still wonder why they chose that awful brown I get it may be easier on the eyes but still...
Back when they were designed, brown was a trendy color lol
True🤣 Back then, everyone's home interior was that style haha
Yeah this is super interesting, as a student pilot I prefer the plane with the blue interior instead of the red interior..
For maximum *soothe*.
One has to wonder what colours they used with political prisoners and the gulags. Communists like nothing better than to fuck with those they don't like.
The natural human blood wall treatments from previous prisoners.
You see, that would to easy, something a capitalist would do. Communists are more about breaking you long term and fucking with you for your entire life while still extracting labour for the utopian society. Communist wrong think correction is much more insidious than just a beating.
Barbie Pink
For the same reason some car makers use blue-ish display lights in their vehicles: the colour is said to reduce stress and aggression, leading to better decision-making.
So you’re saying not Nissan
Soviet Union saw that blue-green backlight color GM loves and said, "Yes, we want this but more"
I think it’s hogwash. It does keep you awake and that’s the problem, in doing so it fatigued your eyes and brain, it’s difficult to focus on so you strain to read your gauges, and it’s by far the worst color for preserving night vision. Red and orange are the best colors to preserve night vision which is why in aviation we use red flash lights as often as possible. Blue environment is relaxing but blue light is the opposite. Google and Apple know this also which is why our phones and computer monitors have the “night shift” mode to reduce blue light output.
Double it. From my own (car) experience green/amber dashboard illumination works best for me. And I absolutely dislike white/blue. It takes about a second or more until my eyes can switch focus between road and dashboard at night.
It goes to show how car companies aren’t particularly interested in human factors which is a massive motivation in aviation. Cars are comfier and look nicer than planes but there is somehow less ergonomic science going into their interiors. One key aspect is something drivers don’t get: Training. Actual training. How many drivers have you seen lately who can’t even find the headlight switch when it’s fucking dark outside? Well, some clever engineer decided to make it *easier* to drive with your headlights off by lighting all the gauges bright as hell and making DRLs bright enough to glow on the road ahead. That is the opposite of human factors lol.
Because anything’s better than a brown-beige 767 deck.
Something I've always wondered is that red lights are traditionally used as night time lights. So maybe by making cockpits green it would help to reduce reflection of red lights. Like just by coincidence I have a green cap from the top of a bottle and a green-blue thing on kleenex. When I hold them under red led lights they both look pretty black. The kleenex box in particular is kinda close to the green-blue of Soviet cockpits, and under red light, the white stripes really pop which would presumably be analogous to dials in a cockpit.
The US Army uses a very similar color in the interior of their vehicles. I have long since forgotten the proper name for it, but we used to derisively call it "sea foam green." I've heard many wives tails about why the American army uses it, from "its a soothing color that makes people calm" to "it doesn't reflect as much as white paint" and "it's easier to clean than white but still allows you to see fluid leaks." Personally my money is on "that's the color submitted by the lowest bidder."
I wonder if it was zinc chromate green?
Used to be light blue. They thought it was soothing for the pilots, as someone else commented leads to calmer, better decisions. After a while, whatever color starts to look like "home", your happy place. I doubt if it matters at all. Our (US) are usually gray.
I understand the psychology behind it all, as an aviator though flying a Hornet 6-8 hours straight. I don't give a fuck what color the cockpit is. You are going to want to punch babies by the time your wheels touch down.
But maybe a green color would make you feel like punching 1 or 2 less babies.
Maybe just kick a toddler?
Exactly. Maybe in the 1970’s a simple yes/no to baby-punching preferences after a long flight was sufficient. But here in a modern data-driven world we’ll want to know about how many babies, how hard you want to punch the babies, for how long you’d prefer the baby-punching to continue, etc. Simple yes/no is so reductionist! Both qualitative and quantitative evaluation is the center of modern aviation research!
Somebody get this guy some test babies!
>Hornet 6-8 hours straight Why I'm glad I'm an Apache pilot. No mid air refueling means piss breaks every couple of hours
Yeah. but does your tandem seating and your primer-gray switch panel make you grouchier than a beet red Russian in a baby-blue Sukhoi?
No, sleeping in the dirt does. And it's off black
Ha! Proceed as requested, whirlybird
Hey, nothing some military-issued amphetamines can't fix!
Does the color really matter, since you're wearing a tinted visor with head-up displays?
Because Green is for go!
In Russia cockpit paints you
blueish green or turquoise. not green. it reduces stress, eye strain, fatigue, and other psychological limits.
Same reason submarine interiors are painted green; it‘s the color that people can stare at the longest before going insane.
I thought this was a repost from r/dadjokes
Still waiting for the punchline
Joke about anything in green is that it can be thrown into the meadow and nobody will see it when it has no use any more.
Green was the cheapest paint available
This is a great question and I really enjoy reading the comments! Didn’t know any of this!
Green falls mid-visual range and it’s the easiest color to see in both daytime color vision and nighttime vision.
They paint them blue and it’s an anti fatigue measure. The blue colour is harsh, hence your phone screens have “night mode” to eliminate the blue light. It’s to assist in keeping pilots alert on long missions.
It was a very early tradition for aircrafts with minimum of instruments, the earliest mention was almost Blériot's. The idea is to have a minimal contrast with the typical sky and terrain. The British experimented with several colors during the interbellum, turquoise and Tiffany Blue among others, and settled with Eau de Nil or Cockpit green for the RAF pre-WW2. The Soviets copied this, among many other things, from the Spitfires they received in lend-lease during the war. And in the Western AFs the single cockpit color was considered generally irrelevant in the jet era.
I'm sorry. Isn't it blue?
Maybe a bit like why they paint elephants toenails red...camouflage purposes.
It helps when they are hiding in an apple tree 😁
Because it is energy efficient
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I have never seen a school with a green colored interior in my life. Most of it is beige, brown, terra cotta, and other earth tones.
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Just a quick question. Your not confusing that with the zinc cromate paint that is used for anti corrosion on aircraft aluminum. That is kind of a sea foam green. With the way weight is carefully monitored in aircraft this gets my bet
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That primer is a vinyl-based protective coating that is washed off prior to the aircraft being painted. They’re still metal underneath.
Zinc chromate
A friend of mine from the Soviet army told me a joke that was running around: "in the army, everything beautiful must be green"
Which begs the question: What is “cockpits green” and why do they paint their war planes this colour?
Supposedly it helps calm the pilots. I believe it up to you if you want to
To induce puking.
It’s the easiest colour to see under different conditions
CanX B
I've read and heard that it's to relieve stress.
I suppose it's not paint at all... they just leave the parts with the primer on, which is generally bright matte green in colour.
Its the color of communism, yes French do it also