How The Ukrainians Wrecked the Russians’ Best Helicopter Regiments

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.