How The Ukrainians Wrecked the Russians’ Best Helicopter Regiments

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How The Ukrainians Wrecked the Russians’ Best Helicopter Regiments
David AxeForbes Staff
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A Kamov Ka-52 and pilot.RUSSIAN STATE MEDIA
It’s not totally accurate to describe the Russian air force’s Kamov
Ka-52 attack helicopters as death traps. But it’s not totally
inaccurate, either.

The air force went into Russia’s wider war on Ukraine starting in late
February with around 100 of the twin-rotor, two-seat Ka-52s. Nine months
later it has lost at least 25 of them that independent analysts can confirm.

It’s not clear how many crew members have died. But it’s really hard to
survive a helicopter shoot-down, so it’s possible scores of Ka-52 fliers
have perished.

A team of researchers with the Royal United Services Institute in London
explained what happened to what was, at one point, an elite rotary-wing
force.

The best Ka-52 crews got shot down early in the war while trying to
penetrate deep behind Ukrainian lines. Now less-skilled crews are easy
targets for ever bolder Ukrainian air defenders.

“In summary, the Russian attack helicopter fleet was initially used to
conduct aggressive hunter-killer sorties behind Ukrainian frontlines,
with penetration depths of up to 50 kilometers [31 miles] relatively
common,” Justin Bronk, Nick Reynolds and Jack Watling wrote in their
definitive study of the Ukraine air war’s early months.

“Russian tactics shifted during March, with penetrating sorties becoming
less and less common,” Bronk, Reynolds and Watling added. “Despite this
cautious approach, they continue to be shot down regularly.”

On paper, the Ka-52 is one of the best attack helicopters in the world.
With its better optics, night-vision devices and precision missiles than
the other main Russian gunship types, the Mil Mi-24 and Mil Mi-28, the
Ka-52 initially was a specialist. The Russian air force assigned the
type to support special operations forces, especially at night.

The Ka-52 crews’ superior training—a prerequisite for commando ops—made
them invaluable to Russian planners in the first few weeks of the
invasion of Ukraine, as haphazardly prepared Russian brigades barreled
across the border with Ukraine and headed toward Kyiv. The goal: to
destroy the Ukrainian government and force the Ukrainian armed forces to
surrender.

Russian brigades found themselves deep behind Ukrainian lines. Their
communications breaking down. Their logistics fraying. The Kremlin
leaned heavily on the Ka-52s to support the troops on the bleeding edge
of a risky war plan.

“During the battle for Kyiv, Mi-24 and Mi-28 gunships operated alongside
the Ka-52 in the hunter-killer role at night, as well as in daylight,”
the RUSI team wrote. “However, typically night operations of this kind
have been flown by the Ka-52 fleet due to their superior night-vision
equipment.”

The Ukrainians threw everything they had at the Ka-52s and other Russian
helicopters, hitting them with anti-tank missiles and even blowing them
up on the ground with artillery and drones. But it was the Ukrainians’
thousands of short-range, infrared-guided, man-portable air-defense
systems—including American-made Stingers—that killed the most Ka-52 crews.


“Russian helicopter (and fixed-wing attack jet) defensive aids suites
combining missile-approach warning sensors and
countermeasures-dispensing programs have functioned reasonably well
throughout the conflict, succeeding in decoying many incoming missiles,”
the RUSI analysts wrote. “However, the sheer number of MANPADS fired at
them during penetrating sorties ensured that many hits were still scored.”

When Russian ground forces retreated from Kyiv Oblast in April, the
Ka-52 regiments did, too. Many of the best Ka-52 crew were dead. The
survivors got a lot more cautious.

“Heavy losses taken during daylight operations, especially among
experienced crews, created a dynamic whereby Russian rotary crews became
very hesitant to cross the Ukrainian frontlines from April,” Bronk,
Reynolds and Watling wrote. “Penetration distances and the number of
hunter-killer sorties began to diminish rapidly across all the gunship
fleets.”

The Ka-52 crews now have settled on two main tactics. They, like the
Mi-24 and Mi-28 crews, often lob unguided rockets in high ballistic
arcs. Ballistic launch allows the crews to stay on the Russian side of
the front line, where the MANPADS threat is somewhat lighter.

But the ballistic attack method is wildly inaccurate. “Sufficient only
to force Ukrainian forces in the open to take cover, or to fix dug-in
units in place until the impacts subside,” is how the RUSI study
described the method.

The more accurate alternative—to fire a Vikhr anti-tank missile from
several miles away—also helps to keep Ka-52 crews on the safer side of
the line of contact. But there’s a downside.

The 90-pound Vikhr is a “beam-rider.” A Ka-52 crew must hover a few
hundred feet off the ground, shoot a laser beam at the target from as
far as six miles away, then fire the missile, which follows the laser
all the way to the target.

The problem is, the firing helicopter can’t move until the missile hits.
And that can take tens of seconds—an eternity when increasingly skilled
Ukrainian MANPADS shooters are nearby. So even after abandoning
deep-penetration operations, the Ka-52 crews keep getting shot down.

The Russian air force still has 75 or so Ka-52s. The loss of experienced
crews might sting more than the airframe write-offs do. It could take
years for the air force to train good replacements for all the Ka-52
fliers who’ve died in Ukraine.

But the service probably doesn’t have years. The Ukrainians, after
kicking the Russians out of Kyiv Oblast in April and fighting the
Russians to a standstill in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region over the
summer, counterattacked this fall in the east and the south.

The Ukrainians are advancing. The Russians are retreating. The war could
end long before the Russian air force can rebuild its best attack
helicopter regiments.

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David Axe
I'm a journalist, author and filmmaker based in Columbia, South Carolina.

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A couple comments are:

First in last out
12 November, 2022
Those wiley ruSSians! Luring the gullible Ukrainians into such an
obvious sense of superiority! And on Ukrainian ground too. Such chess
players!

The truth teller not a globalist
11 November, 2022
How is the global slice of fake news going to act after Russia wins this
war win from the very beginning all we hear on our media is how Russia
is losing maybe people will start to understand that we're the most lied
to people in the world


Rudy Rassendyll
11 November, 2022
Evidence? All I see is a touching faith in Big Vlady -- a masterful
teller of tales.

UkraineForever
2 days ago
Russian troll! Your military is fourth rate. Against any modern European
country you would be decimated in days. Lob a missile into Poland and
see what happens.

Rubéncio
12 November, 2022
Looks like Ukraine it's winning as you points out, meanwhile Ukrainian
people are suffering the lost of most infrastructure