Ka-52 in Russian Air Force

Russia's Progress Arsenyev aviation company will deliver 12 Ka-52 attack helicopters to the Russian Defense Ministry as part of state orders this year, Deputy Defense Minister Yuriy Borisov said Tuesday.

https://sputniknews.com/military/201703071051328411-ka52-helicopters-delivery/

How much more expensive is the Ka-52 to the new Mi-28NM?

Thanks for the informative response, Garry.

I should have worded my argument a little better, but I do understand that the Ka-50 only has one person inside; the Ka-52 is the variant that received a side by side configuration - in order to save on weight... and so I was pointing out that this is precisely why there was no variant of the Ka-50 featuring a conventional stepped, tandem two seater.

I'm not that daft, mate.

Video of Ka-52's and Vikhr-1 from Syria.

The Kamov design bureau did offer a two seat tandem for Turkey... they even called it the Erdogan.

I seem to remember it had an articulated cannon mount so it could be fired from the side normal position but could also be rotated down like an under nose weapon with a better field of fire.

Turkey was not interested of course so nothing really became of it AFAIK.

Very much Turkeys loss as I think it would have been a very powerful aircraft.

Originally the KA-50 was made a single seat helo because the job of the pilot was rather simplified and the fire control system has auto targeting so you could operate it like a fighter plane... this means with two crew you have two aircraft and twice the fire power.

Only problem was the Russian military was starting to demand all weather day and night capability and no matter how good your electronics and electro optics are flying at night is a full time job so they needed two crew.

They chose the side by side arrangement because of the better communications between the crew and to minimise the increase in weight caused by the larger crew compartment and extra armour.

How much more expensive is the Ka-52 to the new Mi-28NM?

No idea to be honest.

The naval Ka-52K will have an AESA radar which will push up the cost. even the standard Ka-52 will have MMW radar so it likely isn't cheap either.

GarryB wrote:The Kamov design bureau did offer a two seat tandem for Turkey... they even called it the Erdogan.

I seem to remember it had an articulated cannon mount so it could be fired from the side normal position but could also be rotated down like an under nose weapon with a better field of fire.

Turkey was not interested of course so nothing really became of it AFAIK.

Very much Turkeys loss as I think it would have been a very powerful aircraft.

Originally the KA-50 was made a single seat helo because the job of the pilot was rather simplified  and the fire control system has auto targeting so you could operate it like a fighter plane... this means with two crew you have two aircraft and twice the fire power.

Only problem was the Russian military was starting to demand all weather day and night capability and no matter how good your electronics and electro optics are flying at night is a full time job so they needed two crew.

They chose the side by side arrangement because of the better communications between the crew and to minimise the increase in weight caused by the larger crew compartment and extra armour.

Ka-50 Erdogan



The Erdogan variant suffered the same weakness of all Western attack helicopters... it had far too much glass and I think weight considerations were the culprit. The Erdogan variant could not maintain the same profile of the Ka-50 Havoc. The recent metallurgical advances that have produced a metal as strong as titanium but 13% lighter than steel at 1/10th the cost of titanium, could be utilized to create a Ka-50 variant with a two seater stepped cockpit without any increase in weight; we could create such a Ka-50 variant weighing 6500 kg - which would increase performance and provide superior protection levels to the Mi-28. Other promising metals have the strength of titanium but with the density of aluminum.

Question: are vibration issues the primary reason why a mast-mounted radar has not been incorporated into the Ka-52? Or is it because a mast-mounted radar mechanically impedes or compromises the performance of the coaxial rotors? I think the longbow has a weight of 130 kg and the Mi-28 has a radar at 140 kg. Would a 50 kg mast-mounted radar be suitable for the Ka-52?

Vibration can apparently be removed in helicopters. Source: http://aviationweek.com/defense/rotorcraft-vibration-can-be-almost-eliminated

The near complete elimination of vibration could enable the use of mast-mounted radars on Kamov variants.

Unique Russian helicopter can hit target from eight kilometers!!!

I know the Ka-52 had a mast-mounted CM radar at some point, but would it be able to accomodate a larger mast-mounted radar weighing in access of 50 kg?

you can put much better , wider and with less vibration radar in the nose of the helicopter.

Rmf wrote:you can put much better , wider and with less vibration radar in the nose of the helicopter.

The nose mounted configuration is undoubtedly superior but I do wish Kamov did not have to remove the mast-mounted CM radar -- a radar that provided the Ka-52 with a 360 degree scanning ability in the air-to-air mode. I'm not sure but I think that KRET's Vitebsk EW will allow the Ka-52 to detect MANPADS at a 360 degree angle. What the CM radar brings to the table is the ability to detect aircraft at 360 degrees, but I suppose detecting aircraft is not all that important for an attack helicopter because it cannot even begin to neutralise the threat.

The ka-52 has the highest out of ground effect hovering ceiling at 4000m, but I can't find the in ground hovering ceiling anywhere on the net.

Ka-52 IGE: 5,500 meters

Ka-52 OGE: 4,000 meters  

Compared to AH-64

IGE: 4,845 meters

OGE: 3,866


How effective would an advanced IRST be on the Ka-52 as a supplementary means of surveillance and detection?  The PIRATE IRST can apparently track 200 aerial (subsonic) targets from 150 km from rear. I wonder how many ground targets it could track. Will the OLS-50 have comparable to superior performance?

Cyrus the great wrote:Ka-52 IGE: 5,500 meters

Ka-52 OGE: 4,000 meters  

Compared to AH-64

IGE: 4,845 meters

OGE: 3,866


How effective would an advanced IRST be on the Ka-52 as a supplementary means of surveillance and detection?  The PIRATE IRST can apparently track 200 aerial (subsonic) targets from 150 km from rear. I wonder how many ground targets it could track. Will the OLS-50 have comparable to superior performance?

The numbers for HIGE and HOGE are wrong for both.

IRST was used on the first prototype of KA-52 since they lacked back than the Radar in operation. How well an IRST would do against ground targets is debatable based on the surface and much richer visual distracting environement it had to scan through unlike the clear sky.

If PIRATE can manage that sort of performance then why bother with a radar...

This would be 150 heat points above the horizon within its field of view and it would not have ranges for those targets...

GarryB wrote:If PIRATE can manage that sort of performance then why bother with a radar...

This would be 150 heat points above the horizon within its field of view and it would not have ranges for those targets...

Few days ago, I've red in a pro typhoon article that their PIRATE had lot of issues finding target in the first versions. Most of the time it was false target because of the bad signal processing. The article is a comparison between rafale and typhoon.

English are lacking behind France and USA too, their technology is not on pair with russians. Su-30MKI exercices proved it. The evaluation of Swiss air force put the Typhoon far behind the Rafale, much closer to the grippen than to the rafale. Actually, french news said that they no more confront the Typhoon against the rafale because they always loose.

Like in every aspects of their life they associats with the USA and try to be bigger than they really are (eco, diplomaticaly, military, technologicaly...).

I would any day chose a Su-35, Rafale or Pak Fa than a Typhoon...

What I was trying to say is that an IRST system is not the same as the thermal night vision equipment a helicopter carries.

An IRST just detects warm things like aircraft engines or the friction heated rotor blades of a hovering helo. The pilot wont know if it is the exhaust of an F-16s engine or a flare launched to defeat an incoming IR missile... or an IR missile whose nose is heated by the friction of flying at mach 2.

An IRST just locates the heat source... and for a fighter that is good enough because everything emitting heat above the horizon (ie in the air) is of interest... whether it is a short lived IR flare... which tells you an enemy fighter is somewhere nearby, or an incoming missile, these are things the fighter pilot would like to know about... an IR target would get him to turn his head to look at the threat... if it is close he can see what it is and if it is a long way away a quick scan with his radar will give him more information about it. Passing the information on to the local AWACS aircraft will get him even more info.

For a helo pilot operating at low altitudes however, an IRST is not good enough... 150 hot points on the ground could be 130 sun heated rocks that are warmer than the dirt around them.

An IRST just detects points of heat it does not create an image the pilot can look at and decide it is a tank or a tanks engine running or for that matter a small fire on the battlefield.

The thermal sights on a helo need to be imaging sights to be useful.

Newer Russian IRSTs include a TV and thermal channel for imaging targets so you can detect a warm or hot object and then look to see what it is. You can also turn the radar in the direction of the target to get information about its distance and speed vector without having to do a full scan of the area.

The advantage of IR systems is angular accuracy, the main problem is lack of ranging accuracy and therefore also lack of an ability to determine whether the target is moving or not.

A single radar pulse is changed if the object it hits is moving towards or away from the radar so distance and speed can be determined in one pulse... the problem is that without location information to begin with you need a broad scan of the air space to find it in the first place.

An IRST offers the chance to locate the target passively so getting more info is easier and less active. A small ranging pulse could be missed in the EM soup that is a combat area.

For an attack helo pilot finding targets using IR is more beneficial and being able to identify them based on the image created is much more useful than just having an IRST... but an IRST system can find points of interest over a large field of view rapidly so the thermal imager can then be zoomed onto the IR sources for identification without having to scan for hours at high resolution to find targets.

CM radar has the enormous advantage of range but is only useful for air targets and air threats. MMW radar is useful for ground targets at much shorter ranges.

A MMW only radar will lack range. A CM radar only will only be useful for air targets. Both are more useful than either one on its own.

They are talking about a radar and a thermal system for the UAV carried by Armata tanks... using a tether these will be very very interesting and probably useful for helos and ground attack aircraft too for collecting target data in real time.

Werewolf wrote:

Cyrus the great wrote:Ka-52 IGE: 5,500 meters

Ka-52 OGE: 4,000 meters  

Compared to AH-64

IGE: 4,845 meters

OGE: 3,866


How effective would an advanced IRST be on the Ka-52 as a supplementary means of surveillance and detection?  The PIRATE IRST can apparently track 200 aerial (subsonic) targets from 150 km from rear. I wonder how many ground targets it could track. Will the OLS-50 have comparable to superior performance?

The numbers for HIGE and HOGE are wrong for both.

IRST was used on the first prototype of KA-52 since they lacked back than the Radar in operation. How well an IRST would do against ground targets is debatable based on the surface and much richer visual distracting environement it had to scan through unlike the clear sky.

I watched an advertisement for the Ka-52 and it did mention that the HOGE of the Ka-52 was 4, 000 m and I found the HIGE on the fas website. Do you have the real numbers for the Ka-52? If an IRST radar cannot perform well in ground operations then I can see why the current set-up is ideal. Vibration issues have prevented the incorporation of the CM radar in the mast, but it does seem that advances in that field will soon remove this obstacle. The new Ka-52 K has an AESA radar - arguably making it the most powerful helicopter around, and so I wonder if Kamov will ever do the same thing for the Ka-52 Alligator. I understand that a MMW radar is better at ground mapping but other manufacturers have solved this problem by creating an AESA radar with complementary SAR and GMTI radars geared specifically for ground mapping and ISR support.

GarryB wrote:What I was trying to say is that an IRST system is not the same as the thermal night vision equipment a helicopter carries.

An IRST just detects warm things like aircraft engines or the friction heated rotor blades of a hovering helo. The pilot wont know if it is the exhaust of an F-16s engine or a flare launched to defeat an incoming IR missile... or an IR missile whose nose is heated by the friction of flying at mach 2.

An IRST just locates the heat source... and for a fighter that is good enough because everything emitting heat above the horizon (ie in the air) is of interest... whether it is a short lived IR flare... which tells you an enemy fighter is somewhere nearby, or an incoming missile, these are things the fighter pilot would like to know about... an IR target would get him to turn his head to look at the threat... if it is close he can see what it is and if it is a long way away a quick scan with his radar will give him more information about it.  Passing the information on to the local AWACS aircraft will get him even more info.

For a helo pilot operating at low altitudes however, an IRST is not good enough... 150 hot points on the ground could be 130 sun heated rocks that are warmer than the dirt around them.

An IRST just detects points of heat it does not create an image the pilot can look at and decide it is a tank or a tanks engine running or for that matter a small fire on the battlefield.

The thermal sights on a helo need to be imaging sights to be useful.

Newer Russian IRSTs include a TV and thermal channel for imaging targets so you can detect a warm or hot object and then look to see what it is. You can also turn the radar in the direction of the target to get information about its distance and speed vector without having to do a full scan of the area.

The advantage of IR systems is angular accuracy, the main problem is lack of ranging accuracy and therefore also lack of an ability to determine whether the target is moving or not.

A single radar pulse is changed if the object it hits is moving towards or away from the radar so distance and speed can be determined in one pulse... the problem is that without location information to begin with you need a broad scan of the air space to find it in the first place.

An IRST offers the chance to locate the target passively so getting more info is easier and less active. A small ranging pulse could be missed in the EM soup that is a combat area.

For an attack helo pilot finding targets using IR is more beneficial and being able to identify them based on the image created is much more useful than just having an IRST... but an IRST system can find points of interest over a large field of view rapidly so the thermal imager can then be zoomed onto the IR sources for identification without having to scan for hours at high resolution to find targets.

CM radar has the enormous advantage of range but is only useful for air targets and air threats. MMW radar is useful for ground targets at much shorter ranges.

A MMW only radar will lack range. A CM radar only will only be useful for air targets. Both are more useful than either one on its own.

They are talking about a radar and a thermal system for the UAV carried by Armata tanks... using a tether these will be very very interesting and probably useful for helos and ground attack aircraft too for collecting target data in real time.

It would seem that an IRST radar could perform the required tasks when tied with a thermal imager but it also seems that it would distract the crew; the established means of detection, tracking and targeting seem to be far more reliable and benefit from automatic modes of operation. An IRST radar  requiring corroboration from a thermal imager would likely prolong the process of target identification and subsequent neutralisation. How significant is the CM advantage on a MMW radar in terms of range for air over-watch mode? Russia seems to have resolved that they will operate both the Ka-52 and the Mi-28NM - with the Ka-52 serving as a scout helicopter and the Mi-28NM serving as an attack helicopter. Let's suppose that a foreign customer was impressed with the Ka-52 but specified that it required a variant with a conventional two seater stepped tandem cockpit configuration... would this be possible if Kamov used carbon fiber in lieu of steel to reduce the overall empty weight to 7, 000 kg? Composites comprise 35% of the platform, so this could be increased to create a tandem two seater variant.




The one seat of the Ka-50 could be doubled in a stepped configuration but with a nose mounted radar like the Ka-52. Could the TV7-117V turboshaft engine be used for the Ka-52? The new engine provides the Mi-38 with a maximum altitude of 8, 600 m and a range of 885 km.

It would seem that an IRST radar could perform the required tasks when tied with a thermal imager but it also seems that it would distract the crew;

It would compliment a thermal sight.

An Apache pilot once described using the optical night vision system on the Apache as trying to fly a Helo by looking through a straw.

Using a thermal night vision system to find targets is difficult too... if you have low zoom then you can cover a larger area quicker but you might miss targets because of lack of zoom. If you zoom in you will take hours just to scan your field of view. Having an IRST means all the hotspots are detected rapidly and you can then use the target locking system to jump from target to target with the thermal imager zoomed in to identify what the target is... is it a Shilka or is it a rock.

If it is a threat then mark it as a priority target. If it is a target mark it as such. Such information can be used to decide what to attack and passed to HQ for other units to be aware of enemy positions on the battlefield.

You might detect an enemy formation worth attacking directly or you might detect an air defence formation or an anti armour formation that your forces will need to know about.

An IRST radar requiring corroboration from a thermal imager would likely prolong the process of target identification and subsequent neutralisation.

As mentioned above it would actually speed things up as it removes the need for the gunner to slowly scan areas at high zoom with the thermal imager.

How significant is the CM advantage on a MMW radar in terms of range for air over-watch mode?

MMW radar is limited regarding tank sized targets to about 12km or so... perhaps 16-20km for a bridge or large building or ship.

CM wave radar can detect aircraft at 100km or more depending on power and radar apature.

Let's suppose that a foreign customer was impressed with the Ka-52 but specified that it required a variant with a conventional two seater stepped tandem cockpit configuration... would this be possible if Kamov used carbon fiber in lieu of steel to reduce the overall empty weight to 7, 000 kg? Composites comprise 35% of the platform, so this could be increased to create a tandem two seater variant.

The customer could have anything they wanted... as long as they paid for it.

The erdogan was an interesting design and could still be built... personally I would adopt the same retractable cannon arrangement, but swap the cannon for a twin barrel 23mm weapon firing the mild 23 x 115mm rounds.

Nice heavy projectile, small compact round with low recoil. Rate of fire is a bit high, but overall a good round for a helo to use against ground targets.

To be honest there is nothing wrong with the side by side seating of the Ka-52... it offers good communication between the crew members.

With modern helmet mounted displays offering virtual cockpit views for night and all weather flight the potential for a single seater becomes more interesting.

Needless to say with twin night vision optics from the nose of the aircraft fed in real time to the pilots NVGs means he would get the view as if his head was on the nose of the aircraft with a perfect view of the ground and the air around the front of the aircraft... he could see through his cockpit displays for night flight... He could operate the weapons like a fighter pilot and a single seat attack helo becomes an option again...

Thanks for that information packed post, Garry.

My only real problem with the Ka-52's side by side configuration, is the fact that the glass on the sides is not adequately protected. The arrangement significantly enhances communication and cooperation between the crew and is superior in that regards but it really should be able to sustain hits from small arms on the sides.

"The Russian Space Systems is developing a new guidance system for artillery armament of the strike-reconnaissance combat Ka-52 'Alligator' helicopter in the framework of cooperation with the Russian Helicopters company. When creating a measurement system for the helicopter's artillery complex,… specialists used the groundwork of the rocket and space technology," the company's press service said.

https://sputniknews.com/military/201705241053939144-russia-ka-52-alligator-space-system/

My only real problem with the Ka-52's side by side configuration, is the fact that the glass on the sides is not adequately protected.

The main difference between tandem and side by side is that SBS has less area needing armour... if you think about two crew one in front of the other you double the side glass needed and also run the risk of both looking out the same side at the same time instead of one covering one side and front and the other covering the other side and the front.

In terms of weight if you consider a front and side armour box around each crew man if you put one in front of the other you save the rear area of one box. If you put them side by side you take off two of the largest areas of armour. You run the risk of a penetration injuring both crew, but it reduces the weight which can be applied to heavier external protection reducing the chance of a penetration in the first place.

Great Ka-52 and Vikhr-1 combat footage with the crew's comms.

Great Ka-52 and Vikhr-1 combat footage with the crew's comms.

Vikhr has no big solid rocket booster like Hermes will so its average speed can be used to give a rough estimate of distance... the Vikhr moves at about 610m/s so about one km per second is a good rule of thumb to work out the range these shots were taken at.