Russia's Ka-52 Attack Helicopter

Russia's Ka-52 Attack Helicopter

(NSI News Source Info) March 19, 2009: The Kamov Ka-50 Black Shark (NATO reporting name: "Hokum A") is a single-seat Russian attack helicopter with the distinctive coaxial rotor system of the Kamov design bureau. It was designed in the 1980s and adopted for service in the Russian army in 1995. It is currently manufactured by the Progress company of Arseniev.

During the late-1990s, Kamov and Israeli Air Industries developed a tandem-seat cockpit version, the Kamov Ka-50-2 Erdogan (Turkish for "Born Warrior"), to compete in Turkey's attack helicopter competition. Kamov later designed another two-seat variant, the Kamov Ka-52 Alligator (NATO reporting name: "Hokum B")

The Ka-50 was designed to be small, fast, and agile to improve survivability and lethality. For minimal weight and size (thus maximal speed and agility) it was -- uniquely among gunships -- to be operated by a single pilot only.

Kamov concluded after thorough research of helicopter combat in Afghanistan and other war zones that the typical attack mission phases of low-level approach, pop-up target acquisition, and weapon launch don't simultaneously demand navigation, maneuvering, and weapons operation of the pilot; and thus with well-designed support automation a single pilot can indeed carry out the entire mission alone. However, it is still an unanswered question whether in practice the rank and file of Black Shark pilots would nevertheless suffer from excess fatigue from this combined workload. Like other Kamov helicopters, it features Kamov's characteristic contra-rotating co-axial rotor system, which removes the need for the entire tail-rotor assembly and improves the aircraft's aerobatic qualities -- it can perform loops, rolls, and “the funnel” (circle-strafing) where the aircraft maintains a line-of-sight to target while flying circles of varying altitude, elevation, and airspeed around it.

Using two rotors means that a smaller rotor with slower moving rotor tips can be used compared to a single rotor design. Since the speed of the advancing rotor tip is a primary limitation to the maximum speed of a helicopter, this allows a faster maximum speed than helicopters such as the AH-64. The elimination of the tail rotor is a qualitative advantage because the torque-countering tail rotor can use up to 30% of engine power.

Furthermore, the vulnerable boom and rear gearbox are fairly common causes of helicopter losses in combat; the Black Shark's entire transmission presents a comparatively small target to ground fire. Kamov maintains that the co-axial drive assembly is built to survive hits from 23 mm ammunition like the other vital parts of the helicopter. The zero native torque also allows the aircraft to be fairly immune to wind strength and direction, and to have an unsurpassed turn rate in all travel speed envelopes. The single seat configuration was considered undesireable by NATO. The first two Ka-50 prototypes had false windows painted on them. The "windows" evidently worked as the first western reports of the aircraft were wildly inaccurate. For improved pilot survivability the Ka-50 is fitted with a NPP Zvezda K-37-800 ejection seat, which is a rare feature for a helicopter. Before the rocket in the ejection seat kicks in, rotor blades are blown away by explosive charges in the rotor disc and the canopy is similarly jettisoned. The first Ka-50 prototype was nicknamed "Werewolf", however Kamov's official name for the type is "Black Shark". As the Soviet Union's collapse vastly reduced military spending before Ka-50 could go into full-scale production, a relatively small number of these aircraft have been built. Reportedly Ka-50's development took place in record time, as Kamov had the forethought of placing liaison engineers at major component suppliers and systems subcontractors. The Ka-50 and its modifications have been chosen as the special forces support helicopter while Mi-28 has become main army's gunship.

The production of Ka-50 was recommenced in 2006. It was later announced in late 2008 that only five more Ka-50s would be produced, and that production would be reconfigured to make exclusively the more adaptable and advanced Ka-52s.