Did Russia build the best attack helicopter ever?

special thanks to Squarespace for sponsoring this video this is the ultimate attack helicopter a true masterpiece well you're supposed to be we double the rotors and Firepower to match this aircraft is considered among many to be the final evolution of the perfect modern day Cavalry built as the answer to the legendary Apache it promised so much for the Soviet Air Force and allowed carmov to finally prove itself as the true Innovation giant of the Soviet aircraft industry despite rival Mill stabbing them in the back [Music] however while the car 52 ended up doing exactly what it was made for fighting American-made armor its very high loss rate in Ukraine operational problems and ridicuer in the media have made it anything but this is the most controversial helicopter flying today an engineering Miracle or flight desperately holding onto its crown [Music] it's the early 80s music is still great Indiana Jones is in the cinemas and on the tarmac of the karma bureau's test facility A New Concept helicopter is taking to the skies for the first time the main Soviet attack helicopter during the 70s was the mi-24 also known as the crocodile but it was not a dedicated attack helicopter rather a transport attack helicopter hybrid and when Hughes unveiled their ah-64 in 1975 A specialized anti-armor helicopter the Soviets realized that they had some work to do you see the Americans had gone in a completely different Direction with the ah-64 design radically different from the Cobra that had come before it was powered with two engines to increase power and survivability and they were positioned on each side of the fuselage the Russians me 24 on the other hand although a twin-engine helicopter much the same had its engines positioned next to each other on top of the cargo compartment and hitting one in combat meant that the other one was likely to be damaged as well thus the desperate Soviets started a new attack alley program in the early 70s but it was dormant until the new threat was revealed from the West The Usual Suspects karmov in the Middle Design bureaus started to work on an answer to the American Apache Mill with a pedigree and several very successful projects so far under their belt had the upper hand and went with a very similar design to the Apache a twin Cedar with separate engines and anti-tank Weaponry but karmov realized that their only chance of winning the contract would be to come up with something completely different they started by pulling out their already developed coaxial rotor designs for their Navy helicopters like the car 27 and proposed something similar now you're probably wondering what exactly is so special about a coaxial rotor anyway well in a traditional design as the rotor spins on a helicopter and creates lift a counter Force pushes the whole fuselage in the other direction and that's why a tail rotor is introduced as a means to counter that force in the opposite movement and stabilize the aircraft as the lift is generated the engines provide further thrust to move the aircraft in any direction so now you understand that if the tail rotor is damaged helicopters generally enter an uncontrollable Spin and is doomed to crash now the twin main rotor or the coaxial rotor design has its rotors spinning in opposite directions eliminating the counter force that pushes the fuselage also eliminated the need for a tail rotor and in case of even losing the whole tail surface a helicopter can still land safely something that is going to come back in a big way by the end of the video but apart from that the twin rotors also create more lift and allow for much better maneuverability in flight but karmov didn't stop there this was supposed to be the ultimate attack helicopter after all in the words of chief designer Sergey mckayev the most expensive part of the helicopter is well the pilot therefore the new v80 only had one pilot because they needed to spare on experience but exactly this choice will come back to haunt this project some 15 years later and almost cancel the whole design however not only did they try to minimize the casualties in case of losing a helicopter it was also equipped with an ejection seat which was a novelty in the helicopter World although a standard in the world of Aviation by that point it was one of the other rare Soviet projects where everything was survivability and pilot oriented this new helicopter was envisioned not only is an attack helicopter but also as a portable anti-air system because it was equipped with short-range anti-air missiles and was to provide support against enemy helicopters and low-flying planes on the battlefield which if you think about is totally insane to see a helicopter Gob against Jets but this actually makes sense in a away because a helicopter would be very hard for enemy Jets to Target on longer distances but with time the design changed and the focus was moved towards a classic attack helicopter roll with a specialization in anti-armor tactics new Hellfire missiles developed to the mid-80s push the Soviets towards development of a similar weapon too and thus in 1990 karmov was green lighted by the government and the first batch of helicopters was being built the car 52 is strongly considered to be one of the best helicopters ever built sold around the world but I honestly believed that they could have made more sales if kamov had used a Squarespace website but before you jump ahead on the timeline I'll sneak in some previews for you for our next video here just like Squarespace snuck in the awesome fluid engine website builder you start with a best-in-class website template and you get to customize every design detail with a reimagined drag and drop technology for desktop and mobile so you don't actually need to make two websites for both platforms you can also stretch your imagination online with the fluid engine which is built in and ready to go with every new Squarespace site plus that's not the only thing that they have as every Squarespace website can have a built-in e-commerce shop to start selling right away or you can use the campaign marketing tools to start driving business instantly I actually use Squarespace myself personally for my online store which is found and explain dot shop so thanks Squarespace so if you want to support the channel and see more animations just like this but also make a business online and start selling right away and get 10 off your first site on domain go to www.squarespace.com found I know when you think planes you think found and explained but now when you think websites think Squarespace thank you but in most of our stories that take place in this era this little key event happened in 1991. that's right the collapse of the USSR picking up from the ashes in 1992 the Now new Russia presented the new attack helicopter to the world at an air show in England officially called the car 50 this new aircraft soon got a nickname the black shark for its mean looks and black paint job it presented itself as the next generation of attack helicopters with extreme maneuverability and survivability overshadowing a fancy piece of Weaponry which was also critical for this program to succeed called the 9k121 Victor missiles and boy I have to tell you just how great these lies are guided missiles were they had a range up to 12 kilometers and paired with the new automated targeting system they would be a perfect weapon against armor these missiles were also part of the su-25t a tank killer upgrade which we mentioned before in our su-25 video after the pilot finds a Target they would just have to mark it with their eyesight and launch a missile targeting guiding and everything else was automated and require no further input from the pilot this would mean that both the su-20 5T and the car 50 would be a single seater and still not have to have another pilot this development was so good that just one year later the Mi 28 was canceled by the Russian government because it was deemed inferior to the car 50 as well as lacking the radar and ability to fly missions during the night and in bad weather conditions it seemed for karmov and the car 50 it was well on its way to Glory during the testing phase some issues with the design started to pop up especially with the decision to have only one pilot during one of the tests the pilot was tasked with finding and destroying 25 hidden Targets on the Range whilst flying low and evading enemy air defenses the mi-28 scored 24 out of 25 hits but the car 50 only scored one the pilot could not operate both the aircraft and the Precision Weaponry at the same time while performing low level flight and spend most of its time trying to invade the AAA and not crash and it couldn't even spot the targets during the chechum wars the car 50 had its first combat deployment fast maneuverable and with a state-of-the-art Weaponry it performed well but it was still extremely hard to operate for the pilots and it flew missions along with car 29s because it failed to reach the mission goals by itself something that didn't go unnoticed by Mill they decided to take their previous design the me 28 and thoroughly update it to the mig-28 N variant which was presented to the Russian military again now with radar updated opto electronics and new weaponry and soon after the war the Russian government decided to scrap the car 50 program and it's dead by this new me 28 version for the Air Force a shocking betrayal that put karmov on the back step but they had one more Ace up their sleeve back during the Prototype phase another two-seater variant was being developed for Recon purposes and to act as the command helicopter on the field supplying data and targeting information to other helicopters and this is exactly what the new car 52 would be based off apart from its tail rotorless design the car 52 would have the new vk2500 engines that had better payload capacity climbing speed overall speed and maneuverability then the American Apache unlike both the Apache and the car 50 with four underwing pylons for Weaponry this one would have six it was also equipped with a radar like the Apache D or the Longbow variant and the me 28n for terrain mapping and targeting it was also equipped with the white bisque or president s missile defense system which has a 360 Degrees coverage and detects and automatically launches flares against IR guided missiles but let's talk weapons and this is where it gets cool its main weapon would be those laser-guided missiles and a massive targeting Recon turret below the no section that could shoot 360 degrees but apart from that it also has a 30 millimeter cannon and can also carry very unguided missiles but that's pretty standard stuff so why has 25 of the entire fleet already been destroyed let's dive in to the war in Ukraine and the role of the car 52. now this is where the discussion of the war in Ukraine gets a little bit controversial and I want to point out the Minefield that it is to talk about the performance of certain weapon systems so I don't really want to get into the politics of the battle but I just want to talk about the actual statistics that we have about the car 52 specifically how it's performed in combat according to the OS int list which is obviously unfinished so far because the war is still ongoing it is stated that out of 220 confirmed helicopter kills 210 a car 52. if you take into consideration that not every missile launch or hit was published the actual number probably goes much higher for comparison the U.S sources state that the Apaches had some 500 kills during the Gulf War and that's without photo or video evidence but in total over 270 helicopters were performing combat flights compared to a total of 120 cars 52s in service which are probably less than 100 performing actual combat missions this gives a combat performance a very comparable levels to the Apache but the huge difference is in the number of helicopters lost so let's also talk about the elephant in the room out of some 125 helicopters in the Ukraine theater 34 have been lost to ukrainians either in the air or on the ground that's the same amount of Apaches the US Army lost during the seven years of war in Insurgency in Iraq from 2003 to 2010 and 15 of those were lost to hostile fire the high attrition rates are due to several factors first and foremost the Russians were performing extremely poorly in the first phase of the Ukrainian War the car 52 the most sophisticated and expensive helicopter in the Russian Air Force was flying missions in the contested airspace with unguided rocket pods Simply Stupid the Americans learned this the hard way during the Gulf War where during one of the attacks out of a 33 attacking Apaches one was shot down and 30 returned with heavy damage the Americans realized that these helicopters needed to be used much more carefully relying on Hellfire missiles in Superior mid-range attacks it took the Russians almost a year to learn this but let's go back to the purpose of this helicopter its specialized anti-armor platform with a role of commanding helicopter transferring data and Recon info to other units in the field during the Ukrainian counter-offensive the performance of the car 52s was put to the test with long range shots up to nine kilometers away putting them out of the range of the Ukrainian anti-air systems and being suppressed near the front lines so the car 52s can operate at any time the car 52 is used exactly as was envisions and now the losses are minimal in the past two months its defense systems are also being used to defend against rockets extremely well but it also has some problems take a look at this video from Syria foreign [Music] the system is informing the pilot that has been painted by geopard and Roland AA systems neither of which are in operation in Syria and there are videos where it successfully defends itself from even two missiles but when the flares run out the car 52 is a Sitting Duck especially where there are dozens of man pads everywhere at any one time another issue with the car 52 is the strong vibrations It suffers when carrying heavy payloads therefore restricting the amount of weapons it can carry in a single Mission this might be due to bad maintenance wear and tear or simply design issues that were never fixed but last and not least unlike Hellfire missiles or the new Russian lmus its current missiles are not fire and forget weapons and the helicopter either has to maintain position or very slowly move whilst the missiles are being guided this has led to ukrainians shooting down r52s with stugnas p-a-tgms which is something you would only imagine happening in a video game on the other hand ejection seats have saved pilots on several occasions doing their job and saving them from almost a certain death recently we got real proof of the missing tail survivability Theory one helicopter was damaged and lost its almost whole tail section and managed to land safely going into the future Russia has started to upgrade the car 52 with something called the car 52m this modernized version won't have new Imaging and targeting modules under the nose paired with a now modern aesa radar the lmua or isdailia three or five missiles that we mentioned which are currently only available for the me 28 will be included for the car 52 as well they are true fire and forget missiles that are either passive or active guidance to the Target this new M variant is also getting new sensors and updated missile defense based off experiences during the war and we can assume that something will be done about those vibration issues to sum it all up the car 52 weapons platform is by no means a bad helicopter the M variant will solve a couple of problems and make it even deadlier with new weapon options but unfortunately we all know how it's going to be used and on that unfortunate depressing note I want to thank you for watching today's video of found and explained I hope that you found this video the history and the analysis interesting and despite all the political issues I hope we can appreciate the hard work that the engineers made to make such an incredible flying machine a beautiful helicopter that has an awful purpose

Channel: Found And Explained

Views: 831,595

Keywords: attack helicopter, russian helicopter, attack helicopters, ka-52 alligator, ah-64 apache, apache helicopter, russian air force, russian military, attack helicopter meme, military helicopters

Id: x0792GD8fZU

Length: 19min 2sec (1142 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 29 2023