Grrl Power #1295 – Well there’s your problem
As far as I can tell, a Pave Hawk is basically the same thing as a Blackhawk, just with a different loadout? But I decided on the Pave Hawk based on my deep military knowledge, AKA I googled “what helicopters does the air force use for transport” or some such.
I don’t know how likely it is to take out a helicopter with a dumbfire RPG, but it’s not like helicopters have point defense. I assume flares and probably ECM, but nothing that would help against a blind, jet-powered thing-go-boom. My impression of RPGs is that they are relatively short range, and not terribly accurate. So “a lucky shot” while probably pretty unlikely, is not entirely out of the question.
I saw someone mention that Peggy’s skintone looks weird in the last few pages. I agree, actually, but I didn’t notice because I think my drawing monitor is maybe slowly dying? I post the comic on my other, “main” monitor, but that one is intentionally set a slightly higher contrast that it should be, just cause I like the way it looks. Nothing extreme, but neither of them are really set up for Adobe sRGB color space. The cintiq really should be, and I did get one of those monitor color calibration tools and used it, but the recommended settings made everything look oversaturated, almost blown out depending on the color. It’s entirely possible I was doing something wrong, but I prefer to blame the monitor. It’s a Cintiq 34″, the largest one they ever made, but they didn’t make them for long, and I think it’s because they had manufacturing problems. The backlight is uneven if you had a solid color on the screen, though it’s fine if I’m working in CSP. Dark parts of the image shows red, speckled lines like… I don’t know, part of the screen is delaminating or something. Anyway, I’m posting this using a different monitor and the colors are better, so I’ll try adjust the weird colors going forward.
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Don’t you worry Dave, we have played enough Battlefield to entirely believe a lucky dumbfire rpg shot as a possibility.
During the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the Afghan resistance forces got quite good at taking out helicopters with RPGs.
I think that’s part or all myth caused by the fact that the CIA shipped Stinger missiles to the mujahideen by the boatload. They had so many of them that they often used them like RPGs against buildings, vehicles, and infantry. I think people just assumed that they were using RPGs at first because the Stingers were delivered in secret, and by the time the truth was discovered, the rumors had already taken hold.
The Pave Hawk is the Air Force, the Black Hawk is the Army. There are some differences that can be significant, like the refueling probe on the pave hawk.
But yes, they are basically the same frame and motor, etc.
Also the Pave Hawk has new avionics. PAVE stands for Precision Avionics Vectoring Equipment.
typo in panel 3? “i was being transferred *to?* a new f.o.b.”
Not too surprising, as these panels got edited quite a bit while I was working on the page. Fixed!
Also guessing it’s supposed to be “he wanted it knowN that we could outrange…”
Considering the events of Black Hawk Down, a dumb fire RPG is absolutely believable as the reason the helo went down.
IIRC, The RPG marksman responsible for Blackhawk Down got very good at doing that and travelled to Iraq to continue his winning streak. His death made the news in the Little Rock newspaper, but it was unclear if they were specifically targeting him or of it was “oh wow, look who we just clapped!”.
The CIA gave the Taleban quite a few stinger missiles to use against Russian heli’s.
Could have been one of those?
Helos have missile warning systems for guided ones. Peggy woulda heard it.
Stingers use passive IR guidance. If the helicopter could detect it, that means that it was detecting the missile itself, rather than its guidance, and so it would’ve detected the dumbfire too.
Someone remind Sidney that “man” is a gender-neutral word in old English. So a male marksman would be a “markswerman”, and both markswermen and markswifmen would be marksmen.
I was happy to see Peggy eye roll Sidney’s stupidity for saying it.
Except A Sydney isn’t speaking 14th century English and B Werman was never actually used back then. Wifmen was and modern day (loose definition of modern as the myth started in the late 1800s) people looked and saw that “wife” had the male companion of “were” back then and assumed the opposite of Wifman was Werman.
You’ll find many sources that disagree with me but if you follow their citations all the way back you’ll eventually get to one source that doesn’t cite where it got “Werman” from.
But also nothing I said really matters because the companion to a Wifman was a Wepman so you were only one letter off.
Were was used back then (or at the very least before then). Back then, “man” was occassionally dropped, since everybody knew that a wif and a were would be man, whereas “man” refers to the species (human), not to the gender. I have no idea why our ancesters decided to drop the “were” for male adult humans rather than dropping the “man” for both male and female adult humans.
You can even still see that usage of “were” to mean man with the werewolf, literally man-wolf in modern words.
Makes me wonder if there shouldn’t also be wifwolves too.
Ahhhh I was always wondering about the etymology of Were in werewolf.
Thanks!
werewif.
Wouldn’t that be a man who turns into a woman?
We keep telling ya’ll trans people have been around since pretty much always. ^_^
And married female werewolves should be called wifewolves.
Anglo Saxon law set a scale of fines, that and mutilation or death. A fine was determined by the persons worth, murdered and was called “wergild” or “the price of a man” (“gild” meant “Money” or “price” depending on context. “Man” could mean man or woman, as appropriate
In another reality, Peggy would be on KP duty when a stray mortar blows up the mess tent stove and said stove would pin Peggy…!
That’s a narrowly averted decapitation if I’m reading the picture right.
My thought too. Basically lucky on multiple swipes of the blade as it fell that they broke off or were stopped before she was diced.
A lot of main rotors have two long and two short blades, and the short one missed Peggy and the long one got stopped by the sand before it could get her
The one that missed her is clearly broken, not intentionally short. Presumably it broke on a previous strike with the ground.
For the Pave Hawk / Black Hawk helicopters, the main rotor blades are all the same length. As gimmethegepgun says, previous ground strike broke them. I can imagine the airframe rolling a few times before stopping, so quite possible. Though, the rotor mast would’ve snapped too.
Alternatively, the perspective is deceptive, and there’s a good gap between the rotors and Peggy’s head.
For the boring of us, Dave thought the scene looked good, and darn the physics!
Glad I wasn’t the only one to notice that!
I was just thinking that myself.
If you were wondering, the title of the strip was Syd’s initial response to Peggy telling her the abbreviated version of this story.
If it was my comment that you were referring to… then yes I think Peggy’s skintone looks a lot better on this page. On previous pages I would say the base-layer seemed darker and so the light patches stood out more and made it look reflective. Kinda uncanny-valley-ish. I think it wasn’t as noticeable with Sydney because her base color was less tan and glasses/hair cover half her face, and the technicolor alien pride-parade can look however strange they want of course.
I also went back to Peggy’s first appearance in the archives and she’s not as obviously buff as I was remembering. I think it was just the big military-style bomber jacket that she was wearing compared to Sydney’s t-shirt, and also I’m not as used to seeing her in short sleeves, so all that’s on me.
I think your Cintiq just got old, and that’s irreversible AFAIK. Trying to calibrate it won’t help all that much.
The fellow that Peggy scared back behind his cover rock, what’s he holding?
I think it’s a scope. With part of it shot off (the smoking bit).
On the larger, Patreon version you can clearly see its not a magazine, which was my first thought. From what I’ve read about traditional military snipers is that they work in pairs with one gunner and one spotter, the latter having a higher power scope than you can put on a gun. This guy might have been trying something similar while flying solo, though, and whether by accident or not the “return fire” from the base was a warning shot and not a “sorry this page has been rated R” shot.
Or I could be completely wrong and it’s pocket-sized hookah, haha.
Yes, you are correct. I forgot about spotters scopes – it’s a dead ringer for this style: https://www.optics-trade.eu/us/tasco-world-class-20-60×60.html
I’d guess that Peggy shot off the tripod that it was sitting on and that’s why its smoking.
I forgot about spotter scopes. Yes, what he’s holding is a dead ringer for one of those with the tripod shot off.
For me it looks like a Binocular where one halve is shoot off.
That’s also a definite possibility I think- I wasn’t sure exactly what was shot off, and why he looked like he was holding it kinda awkwardly, but that could be the answer.
He’s holding one-half of a pair of binoculars.
That looks like a “why is my head still in one piece” shot if he had been using them in the usual style.
OH HEY its an episode of Well Theres Your Problem, a Podcast With Slides about engineering mistakes and disasters! They did one about V-22 ospreys that feels incredibly relevant to this page
While modern helicopters actually have some armor it’s still nowhere near enough to stop something designed to take out main battle tanks. And if it’s hovering or even flying slowly it’s not too hard a target either. It’s lucky if an RPG hitting one only takes out the tail rotor because then it can at least try to autorotate down, like was shown in Black Hawk Down. A direct hit to the fuselage is just game over.
Seen at least one case in the War in Ukraine where a modern Stugna-P ATGM nailed a Russian Ka-52. Wasn’t enough left of the thing to fill a soup can.
RPG-7’s got significantly less oomph, but it can still blow a hole clean through something like a T-62 or M60 Patton from the front.
Ironic she ended up losing a leg when there’s apparently one there for the taking at lower left. But probably still attached to her crew.
Even if that leg was still attached to its original owner, I get the feeling that he isn’t in the shape needed to continue using it. That leg is likely a different size than her original as it was of a larger male origin.
Spelling mistake “and he wanted it known that we could reliably” . Known instead of know.
I believe a shot like that was dumb-luck, from what I understand most Muslim troops are simple folk, handed a gun, told “Run! Go have fun” with very little actual training. Shear mass numbers to carry them instead or any real military training.
Could someone please decipher the abbreviations for those of us who aren’t military and don’t play FPS games? (Abbreviations can stand for multiple things, so Googling may or may not help.) I’m talking specifically about the F.O.B and the dumb-fire RPG.
Forward Observation Base
Rocket-Propelled Grenade (the modern version of the bazooka {not the gum})
Pretty sure it’s “Operating”, not “Observation”
Basically, an FOB is a smaller, sometimes temporary, military base meant to support operations somewhere away from the main base, to improve response times. They aren’t as well-equipped as the main base, but they usually have most of what they need to support operations (logistical receiving and distribution capability, barracks, medical and repair facilities of lesser capability, storage) without needing to rely on the main base most of the time.
Okay. Thank you both!
I assume the “dumb fire” part of that is they weren’t actually aiming at anything, juss shooting in their general direction?
No, they were aiming. “Dumb fire” means that it doesn’t have acting fight adjustment systems. So aim at target, pull trigger, projectile then flies straight forward and hopefully hits something.
The RPGs mentioned worked like that. It was just an explosive attached to a tiny rocket.
This is opposed to a projectile with active tracking such as heat-seeking or radar-guided missiles.
*flight adjustment
So, firing without computer assistance, then?
At its most basic concept, a dumbfire missile is the rock you pick up and throw at something.
A more advanced but still simple would be an arrow fired from a bow.
In the RPG launcher family, the most commonly seen ones are an oversized impact grenade on a stick with fins and a small rocket motor fired from a tube with a trigger and a very basic scope, think small window with a crosshair etched or painted onto it… not that some users used the scope when firing…
And RPG originally comes from the Russian acronym РПГ (Ручной Противотанковый Гранатомёт, Ruchnoy Protivotankovy Granatomyot) which means “handheld anti-tank grenade launcher”.
Which got anglicized into RPG as Rocket Propelled Grenade.
But basically dumbfire weapons go where you point them and have absolutely no ability to track a target or correct their flight.
Agree with gimmethegepgun, it’s Forward Operating Base. Various militaries and some law enforcement groups (like US Border Patrol) build them. They are great at projecting power a greater distance than otherwise feasible, making them particularly good for combating non-traditional enemies (like guerrilla fighters) and thus were heavily used in the Afgan/Iraqi wars of the last couple decades. They are less useful against traditional armies who tend to have the numbers, firepower, and coordination to chew up smaller bases, but FOBs still find uses in large-scale wars. FOBs have been used historically under different names, perhaps most famously by Roman legions.
To add on to Guesticules’s comment, a dumb-fire weapon is any weapon without a guidance system. If after shooting there is no way to direct the shot, it’s a dumb-fire weapon. Like throwing a rock or firing a rifle. Explosive weapons like rockets/missiles/artillery/bombs/etc are commonly found in both guided and dumb-fire styles, and thus the distinction is relevant. You’ll hear people refer to “smart weapons” or “guided munitions”, these are not dumb-fire and use things like active laser targeting or thermal sensors to adjust if the target moves.
Hitting a moving helicopter with a dumb-fire RPG goes from “difficult” to “nearly impossible” depending on the range and speed of the heli. It isn’t hard to imagine a scenario where a transport helicopter is moving close to the ground to reduce radar signature or otherwise make it harder to spot, and the heli comes up over a ridge where a hidden enemy is suddenly close enough to reasonably get a hit. It would still be a difficult shot, and you’d need luck to be in the right place at the right time or some combination of good scouting, planning, coordination, or inside information.
Just wanted to add that RPGs are notoriously inaccurate. So hitting something moving at any distance is very unlikely.
Helicopters tend to move a lot faster than tanks unless they’re hovering, so they would spend less time in range and also be harder to aim at.
Yes, unguided rockets tend to be less accurate than unguided firearm projectiles due to the ongoing thrust. If there’s a gust of wind, or if the nozzle is machined even slightly inaccurately, it goes off course and keeps turning.
No, an RPG hit is as much luck as anything else, including experience and/or skill. :-)
Not only are helos generally too fast for dumb RPGs, a Pave Hawk has a ceiling of 14 000 feet, most of Afghanistan is below 10 000 feet & an RPG-7 rocket is supposed to self-detonate after 3000 feet, my guess is an insurgent caught the helo while it was landing.
Yes, the Pave Hawk can mechanically operate at 14k feet, and it does have a pressurized cabin with seating for 4, but normal flights aren’t at 14k feet.
Specifically, while an old RPG with an anti-tank or anti-personnel explosive may only have an extreme range of 3,000ft (limited by self-destruct timer), modern man-portable anti-air missiles have ranges approaching 20,000ft. So the only thing flying at the service ceiling of 14,000ft will accomplish is make you visible and vulnerable to
morepotential hiding/firing locations, and also make it more difficult to perform evasive maneuvers.Quoted ceilings are for temperate climates, hot and high performance is significantly worse because engines can’t deliver their full performance in hot temperatures which lower the air density, while rotors can’t transmit it as effectively into the less dense air. Pave Hawk’s ceiling dropped to less than the height of the highest mountains around Bagram, forcing a switch to using Army Chinooks.
The ‘problem’ with Peggy’s skintone the last couple pages, is she has lost her healthy tan
Either that, or she has been scrubbing a little too hard with the loofah and her skin has been rubbed raw
Can’t quite see Peggy’s left arm in panel Pave Hawk Upside-down, hope she’s just laying on it
Her left arm is straight along her side. You can see her (bloodied) hand near her waist.
I presume they’ve done an episode on the Tacoma Narrows Bridge
It seems she is quite likely in the best shape of those on the helicopter as she is the sole survivor.
Peggy: About an hour later I got evacuated back to Kandahar where the sealed off my leg to get me ready for physiotherapy with an artificial leg. Then I … well, I can’t talk about what happened after that. I met Max at the hospital and what put her in her hospital is still classified, as far as I know.
Calling it now, time travel power is gonna put Sydney at that base to pull her out of the accident she probably caused in the first place.
An RPG would be lucky, but luck happens.
Any attention at all paid to Ukraine will tell you that the modern battlefield is VERY unfriendly to whirlybirds.
Especially the Ka-52. Russia started the war with 131 of them.
They have about 60 left at last count.
Is the first panel a shout out to the Batman movie?
The meme might indeed be referencing the Adam West Movie:
https://youtu.be/-paXZvuKgi4
Depends on which type of RPG is fired. The most commonly recognizable is the RPG-7, although there are numerous others, the numeric merely designates the spec/fit so they still make RPG-7s, including new warhead variants, even though they’re up past RPG-29. I have no idea if there’s any variants with a proximity fuze, a frag warhead would probably be easy.
There are such variants, though I’m unsure if they are “official” variants. I’m speaking of course to the cobbled together masterpieces in service right now in Ukraine by both sides. RPG’s with grenades taped on, for instance, are an easy “timed fuse” option I’ve seen pictures of, though typically the shooter doesn’t pull the pin but instead relies on the main rocket going off to detonate the frag grenades (and thus turn a single anti-armor explosion into anti-personnel shrapnel).
*reads strip title* well damn, that is one HELL of a callback.
So I work at Sikorsky and it took me a solid couple of minutes to remember what the HH 60 was, then I remembered it stopped being produced a few years ago. Man did I feel dumb not remembering this.
In fairness, this is still based back in like 2008, so it woulda still been in production and service at the time.
The US did after all recently choose the Blackhawk/Osprey replacement, the Valor.
We have an H skeleton still in a room from the last time it was made in 2021 so it’s kind of interesting that it’s been moved and not touched.
The 53k(which I just checked to make sure I could mention) are basically the big angry version of the BH/H. I do think the smaller size of the BH is the only thing that is superior.
The word for the day is rhabdomyolysis.
“Marksman” is an official military term. “Marksmanship Badges” ranked from lowest to highest are: ‘Marksman’, ‘Sharpshooter’ and ‘Expert’. Marksman is also used as a generic term for a darn good shot encompassing all three ranks. I qualified as ‘Expert’ but a real ‘sniper’ is in a whole class by itself. Of note, I am unaware of any current female snipers although historically there have been a few especially in WWII Russia. “Sniper” has its own military specialty and school with a high washout rate. Interestingly, one of the skills needed is artwork being able to draw an accurate description of the surrounding terrain and target area, there you go Dave.
What I find interesting is that Peggy could have served as a Sniper and a Pilot. My thinking is that she was not officially trained as a sniper but picked up and practiced the skill as a point of interest. Shooting at the level of a sniper is a matter of ‘Art’. There are a number of guys at my local range who shoot at that level with their own high priced rifles. That said, there is more to being a military trained Sniper than shooting.
That Peggy is a trained helicopter pilot goes without saying. Although I think Captain or Chief Warrant Officer 2 would be a more appropriate rank for her.
Superhero universe, therefore savant people. She’s a high level agent-level human, so multiclassing as sniper and pilot is possible.
Yeah, the greatest sniper ever was a 25 yo Ukrainian woman during WWII (read about her because there is currently a Rocketeer comic Kickstarter where he meets her)
It happens. In this case it was a Spec Ops Little Bird that took a rotar hit.
https://arsof-history.org/articles/v5n3_soar_combat_iraq_page_1.html
Oh no! The helicopter has been transformed into an 80s console video game. Her leg goes off the edge of the screen underneath the fuselage and reappears at the bottom of the panel.
I need to zoom in just to figure out what happened in panel 3.
Apparently she shoot out half his binoculars?
“I don’t know how likely it is to take out a helicopter with a dumbfire RPG, but it’s not like helicopters have point defense.”
You are incredibly unlucky that a enemy managed to hit your helicopter with a RPG. This thing is anti-ground, unguided rocket with a self-detonation distance of under 1 km.
Yet you are also incredibly lucky they only hit the tail rotor. If they hit the main compartment, you would be looking at “chunky salsa”. Or well, be looking like it.
And who threw that shade, DaveB?
The chopper resting on her leg, which is better than her head and/or chest. Judging by whats left of the blades, Peggy was almost beheaded!
You might also double check the export format. CSP is one of three programs that does “perceptual” exports, and if your monitor stops reporting the correct settings, it can result in exports looking wrong. There’s a whole post domewhere abot it, but the gist was to make sure rendering intent is set to Saturated instead of Perceptual. Seems to affect CSP as well as Procreate and Krita, but only if your monitor doesn’t (or stops) supporting sRGB. Might be causing issues if you use hex values or dropper selection.
Looks more like an oversized Bell UH-1 Irquois, than a Blackhawk.
That feeling when you turn a corner, get spooked, and panic-RPG/Rocket/Some form of explosive yourself to death. I did that more than a few times in Warframe when the Penta first came out because it used rifle ammo which was super common and you had practically infinite ammo as a result. It was later changed to have very limited reserve ammo capacity. Not that I’d use it when there’s other stuff to use that gets the job done better.
Duckworth was working toward a Ph.D. in political science at Northern Illinois University, with research interests in the political economy and public health of southeast Asia, when she was deployed to Iraq in 2004.[32] She lost her right leg near the hip and her left leg below the knee[35] from injuries sustained on November 12, 2004, when the UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter she was co-piloting was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade fired by Iraqi insurgents.[36] She was the first American female double amputee from the Iraq War
Yeah, I came here to say this reminded me of Senator Duckworth’s injury