Ukraine Claims It Shot Down Five Russian Helicopters On Wednesday Morning. Here’s Why The Choppers Are Top Targets.

When Ukrainian forces counterattacked in eastern and southern Ukraine starting in late August, the Russian air force struggled to keep up with the swift pace of the Ukrainians’ assault.

The air force’s fighter and bomber crews normally drop bombs on targets their commanders assign them after days of planning. When the enemy is on the move, the crews end up bombing empty forests and fields.

The Russian air force’s attack helicopters, by contrast, clearly have been able to keep up with the Ukrainian counteroffensive. Kamov Ka-52 and Mil Mi-28 gunships firing Vikhr laser-guided missiles have plucked at Ukrainian tanks, fighting vehicles and pontoon bridges, somewhat blunting the assault.

It’s not for no reason that the gunships now are top targets of Ukrainian air defenses.

While the Russian air force’s fixed-wing warplanes largely were absent from the battlefield in the weeks following the twin Ukrainian counterattacks, the service’s attack helicopters surged into the fight.

Videos circulating online depict several successful strikes by Mi-28s and Ka-52s in southern and eastern Ukraine. It’s standard practice for Russian gunships—and Ukrainian gunships, for that matter—to haul unguided rockets into combat and fire them while miles away from their targets, by angling up their noses and loosing the rockets into a high ballistic arc.

These high-angle rocket attacks are very inaccurate. Strikes by laser-guided missiles, flying straight toward their targets, are much more likely to succeed. It’s no coincidence that almost all of the videos of successful raids by Russian gunships depict the rotorcraft firing Vikhr missiles.

The 90-pound Vikhr is a “beam-rider.” A gunship crew hovers a few hundred feet off the ground, shoots a laser beam at the target from as far as six miles away, then fires the missile, which rides the beam all the way to the target.

It’s a precise method of attack, but it’s also dangerous for the attacking crew. To maximize the chance of a hit, the crew must hover in place for as long as 30 seconds. If you’re wondering why the Russian air force has written off at least six Mi-28s and 22 Ka-52s in eight months of fighting—that’s 12 percent of the entire combined fleet—these long hovers are one reason.

Indeed, it’s possible the Ka-52 force—120 or so airframes before the war—suffered its biggest single-day loss on Wednesday. The Ukrainian air force claimed its air-defense crews shot down five Ka-52s in the span of a few minutes. The Ukrainians claim there’s video evidence of the shoot-downs, but haven’t yet released it.

Losing five gunships in one morning would be devastating for the Russian air force. The service suffered an equally powerful blow when the Ukrainians shot down four Russian fighters in a single day on Sept. 24. In all, Russia has lost no fewer than 112 manned aircraft since widening its war on Ukraine starting in late February.

Aerial losses are mounting for both sides as the war grinds toward its second winter. The Ukrainian air force just this week wrote off a Mikoyan MiG-29 to a technical malfunction and a Sukhoi Su-24MR reconnaissance jet to enemy action, bringing to 63 Kyiv’s own manned-aircraft losses.

What’s especially damaging about Russia’s gunship losses, however, is that helicopters firing Vikhr missiles might be the only aircraft in the Russian inventory that are making much difference on the front lines.