User Guide

By 1990, soviet Army Aviation (Armeiskaya Aviatsiya) published its requirement for an anti-
tank helicopter with night fighting capability. The Mil Helicopter Plant of Moscow submitted
its two-seat Mi-28 Havoc and Kamov demonstrated their single-seat Ka-50 Hokum. Both
officially won tender in 1994 and a year later, President Yeltsin signed a decree
commissioning the Ka-50 for military service.
The first airframe left its Siberian factory in 1992. However lack of money forced production
to stop after only 12 airframes had been built, and most of those did not meet the night flying
requirement. As a result, Mil continued development of the Havoc, giving the company a
chance to develop better night flying technologies and offer a more attractive helicopter.
With the difficulty in manufacturing heat vision equipment at that time, emphasis was placed
on radar development. The Mi-28 and Ka-50 used the prototype Almaz and Arbalat
(Crossbow) radar systems respectively. Advances in radar and FLIR design resulted in a
much more complex avionic suite in both helicopters. This proved to be a great
disadvantage in the single-seat Ka-50 where the pilot workload was considerably greater.
Given the high weight of Soviet avionics, fitting a comprehensive suite of avionic systems
to a two-seat helicopter was deemed impractical.
As it happens, a two-seat version of the Ka-50 had been constructed, used for pilot training
it featured a side-by-side cockpit configuration. By adding more powerful engines and
reducing protective armor, a practical two-seat attack helicopter was demonstrated. Further
to this, Kamov contracted western companies to supply lighter and user-friendlier avionic
components.
The first Ka-52 prototype designated "White 061" was premiered at the "Bangalore Aero
India" show in 1996. It was based on the 11th production Ka-50 with a rebuilt front-fuselage
section. It is estimated the Ka-52 is around 80-85 percent identical to the basic Ka-50
helicopter airframe and main system components. The principal dimensions of both
helicopters remain more or less the same. White 061 was flown for the first time on the 25th
June 1997 at Kamov’s flight test base in Lyubertsty.
Experience with the Mi-24 Hind in Afghanistan had convinced Kamov that better crew co-
ordination could be achieved by crew members sitting next to each other. Although
interestingly Mil was not so convinced, and neither was Turkey when it evaluated the Hokum
in 1998. Consequently this marked the start of an unlikely east/west relationship; Kamov in
collaboration with Israeli Aircraft Industries (IAI) began work on the Ka-50-2. This is an
export variant of the Ka-50/52 but has options for a traditional tandem cockpit and a turreted
20mm cannon mounted under the belly. The IAI sensor fit includes a night targeting and
laser range-finder/designator package compatible with a subset of western missile
systems.
Kamov are currently offering Armeiskaya Aviatsiya a mixed package of Ka-52s with existing
Ka-50s upgraded to an all weather/night attack capability. Together they will adopt roles of
battlefield reconnaissance, target identification/distribution and hand-off in a similar fashion
to the AH-64D Apache and AH-64D fitted with the Longbow radar/fire control system.
COMANCHE VERSUS HOKUM
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