Not Even Fog and War Can Ground Ka-52 Helicopter

ARSENYEV, Primorye Region — A holiday atmosphere filled the air as people carrying red, white and yellow balloons filled tidy streets in Arsenyev, a small town in the Primorye region, ignoring a thick fog covering the five-story Soviet-era apartment buildings.

Yury Denisenko, managing director of Progress, the local helicopter plant, knew that even the fog was unlikely to spoil the day.

His plant, one of 10 units of state-owned defense contractor Russian Helicopters, was celebrating its 75th anniversary with a demonstration flight of its latest attack helicopter, the Ka-52 Alligator, which can fly in any weather, Denisenko said.

“The Ka-52 can fly in the fog. It’s an all-weather helicopter equipped with all the appropriate systems,” he said Saturday.

The Ka-52, whose serial production started at Progress in 2008, is among the aircraft to be shipped to the Defense Ministry in the next 10 years as part of the government’s 20 trillion ruble ($683 billion) plan to re-equip the armed services by 2020.

The ministry ordered more than 140 of the helicopters and signed a contract with Russian Helicopters last week, said the holding’s chief executive, Dmitry Petrov, adding that shipments had already started.

“The size of the contract is more than 120 billion rubles,” he told journalists ahead of the celebrations.

The holding also signed contracts with the Defense Ministry during the MAKS air show last month to deliver more than 450 helicopters by 2020.

Export shipments of Ka-52 Alligator might start in the near future as state arms trader Rosoboronexport is in talks to begin export supplies, Petrov said.

“According to our information, such negotiations are already being held,” he said, without elaborating.

Petrov declined to specify the potential buyers, but Interfax reported last month, citing a source in the armed forces, that Libya had planned to spend $1 billion to buy the Ka-52 Alligator helicopters before an arms embargo kicked in.

Rosoboronexport chief executive Anatoly Isaikin said last month that Russia has lost $4 billion, including losses from potential contracts, under the sanctions.

But Andrei Reus, head of state-owned Oboronprom, the parent company of Russian Helicopters, said the helicopter manufacturer’s revenues are unlikely to be affected by the loss of potential contracts because it has many orders.

“Russian Helicopters’ production capacities have never been as busy as now,” said Reus, who also attended the celebrations.

Petrov echoed his thoughts. “Our missed profit equals zero,” he said, adding that Progress’ manufacturing facilities are fully loaded till 2020 and production volumes at the plant will increase.

Russian Helicopters — which claims to be the world’s No. 1 producer of attack helicopters — completed consolidation of the country’s helicopter manufacturing facilities into one vertically integrated holding late last year, and Petrov said that Progress is a pearl in the crown of the holding’s units.

The holding’s other units include plants in Rostov-on-Don; Ulan-Ude, Buryatia; Kazan, Tatarstan; and Kumertau, Bashkortostan.

Apart from the Ka-52 helicopters, the plant in Arsenyev, a single-industry town 250 kilometers northeast of Vladivostok, will also commence production of Mi-34C1 light civil helicopters next year and start manufacturing medium-lift Ka-62 helicopters in 2014.

The holding also plans to launch production of a Ka-52K, a modification of the Alligator model intended for equipping the Mistral-class helicopter ships that Russia ordered from France for 1.2 billion euros ($1.7 billion) in June.

The production of trial models of the helicopter will begin at Progress next year, Denisenko said.

Russian Helicopters will spend about $250 million on research and development, including designing new helicopters, this year, Petrov said.

About half of that sum will come from the holding’s revenues, with the rest being provided from the federal budget and in bank loans, he said.

Russian Helicopters planned to raise about $500 million in an initial public offering on the London and Moscow stock exchanges, which would make it the first state-controlled defense company to go public, but called off the listing because of a lack of interest. It had planned to spend the funds on development and paying off debt.

Petrov said the company, which was valued at $1.8 billion to $2.4 billion in May, plans to go public “as soon as the markets allow,” adding that it could list shares in the beginning or the middle of next year. “It’s not our goal to list at just any price,” Petrov said.

Top executives plan to visit major international stock exchanges in November and meet with investors again. But they will wait again on the IPO if current volatility remains on global markets, Petrov said.

Russian Helicopters has invested more than 3 billion rubles in modernizing the Arsenyev plant in the last three years and plans to invest another 6 billion rubles in the next several years, he said.

The plant, which has 6,000 employees, benefited from joining Russian Helicopters, which gave the facility the chance to get state orders and create additional jobs, Denisenko said.

The plant has undergone a rebirth with the new facilities equipped with modern machinery, although Denisenko, who came to it in 1975 as an ordinary worker, cannot forget the hard times in the 1990s, when the country’s helicopter industry was in ruins after the Soviet collapse.

“The plant was in tight economic straits, there was no work, wages were being held up, and many of my colleagues left to different private firms,” said Denisenko, who was head of the plant’s assembly facility at the time.

“My personal achievement is that I remained devoted to my work … because I love aviation,” he told The Moscow Times.

Half an hour later he joined dozens of other aviation lovers to watch the demonstration flight of the Ka-52 at the nearby landing field, as the fog let up and the helicopter maneuvered in the blue sky.

Logic wins:) In fact ‘Soviet junk myth’ is one of liberal lies. It is carefully misinterpreting Arab-Israely and Gulf War facts to sabotage military funding. An idea behind it is to brainwash public into an idea that US has no threats to keep up with and to relocate spending to democrat freeloaders.

Bingo. What some (some including asinine liberals as well as some FReepers sadly) do not realize is that the reason the US military machine performed so well was due to a powerful mix of superlative training, superlative tactics, superlative equipment, superlative situational awareness, and superlative people. With the mix of those 5 attributes, which requires effort and money, the successes so far attained would not have occurred. One should also consider that the enemy also had the above 5 attributes ...only in reverse (i.e. poor training, deficient tactics, old/ill-maintained/limited equipment, absent situational awareness, and people who were simply not that good). An example I like to give is to ask what the outcome would have been in Gulf War One had the Iraqis been flying F-4 Phantoms and Thunderchiefs (without RWRs or BVR weaponry) and the USAF were flying the latest SU-30 Flankers. The result would have been the same - dead Iraqis (another example I like to use is the Indian airforce with its SU-30MKIs, with the same 'junk' DusttoYou was referring to, was to face up against Pakistani F-16As. The Indian Flankers would be shooting the Pakistani vipers without having to cross over to Pakistani airspace. There was a publicized incident some years back where a sole Indian MiG-29 made two Pakistani F-16s turn back and flee. Does that mean F-16s are 'junk?' Nope, only that the Indians had the better equipment compared to the Pakistanis. The newer F-16Cs the Pakistanis got are very different from the As for instance.

Anyways, US superiority is a mix of those 5 factors. Take away any one and the situation gets worse. Take away two and it gets exponentially worse (and making it more like a fair fight). Take away more than two and it is a fair fight, and you don't want to be in a fair fight.

Now, it is not a big problem if one is facing off against the usual set of enemies (i.e. Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Panama, Grenada, Bosnia). However, some day the US may have to go up against a near-peer adversary (the most likely being China), and when that happens, when the enemy is not flying vintage airplanes with no radar, no RWR, no jammers and poor training, when the enemy has been training to face off against a superlative foe rather than simply crushing dissent - when that happens, it will be interesting to see how the same 'junk' that is looked down upon performs.

I find it totally ludicrous to see a person basing future conflict (most possibly with a near-peer adversary) on the outcome of the First Gulf War. That is ridiculous! Almost stupid ('almost' only because I never use the word 'stupid'). I have seen enemy radars (especially the advanced IADS used by China) called 'useless' on FR because of the way the Iraqi system was destroyed (without consideration that the Iraqi system, called KARI which was a mix of Soviet, French and British systems, was created to protect them from a limited Israeli and/or Iranian attack in the 1980s and would never have had a chance against the massive assault done by the Allies ...and even then it still managed to bring down Allied planes). I have seen on FR missiles like the S-300/400 called 'useless' because of how the Israelis took out a Syrian target (without consideration that the Israelis not only used a route that was less protected for ingress, but the missiles were old versions - not the S-300 - and short range systems. The actual Israeli report showed the route taken and the missiles faced, but some still said it was the S-300). I have seen on FR D-E submarines, particularly those with AIP, pooh-pooed away as 'useless' (without consideration that the USN itself states those are some of the systems that worry them the most, considering how silent such submarines can be in littoral waters and the advanced weaponry like the Klub missile they may possess). Basically, there is a section on FR that simply closes their eyes and refuses to consider that not every foe will be some chap on a camel with a Kalashnikov. That some may have a mind that can think. Oh, and when someone tries to bring up logic (like you did on that other thread, also on the Kamov) someone will ask why you are 'defending the Russians/Chinese/Martians/etc.' The moment the logic cannot be debated, it turns into a 'why are you XXX.'

The good thing is that the people who head the military (I am not talking about the politicians, but rather the strategists and other people of note in the military hierarchies) are people of vision who consider all factors. People who can logically look at the reasons for victory (e.g. the First Gulf War was a wonder of strategic depth and execution) and reasons for shortfalls in terms of results, and are able to move forward based on what they see. People who know that future adversaries will not always be low-intensity type conflicts, but also possible wars over resources/geopolitics against nation-states that know how to degrade AMRAAM pK. Fortunately those are the people with some say over future military direction, because if it was up to some people all we would have are A-10s (a weapon system that some FReepers believe is the end-all-be-all, without realizing that without sanitized airspace it is simply a well armored target to the extent that during the Cold War A-10 pilots and AH-64 pilots used to yap about whether it would be the Warthog or the Apache shot down first if the Soviets ever invaded through the Fulda).

I am sure those that argued for the reduction of F-22 numbers (during the Bush administration from 800+ to 187) and ending of the program (Obama administration) were operating under the same assumption - all that is out there is 'junk' and the F-15 is more than enough. Basing it on the results they got from the Gulf War and Bosnia. Junk ...well, let us see how well F/A-18s will cope against Chinese SU-30/J-11s, J-10s as well as the 'useless' S-300/HQ-9 platforms if an American carrier decides to step in in defense of Taiwan. Already, according to a Rand study, even F-22s wouldn't hack it (because there are too few, they are flying in from too far thus requiring air refueling, and even with AMRAAMs that score 100% kills and Chinese missiles that score 0% kills, there are too many Flankers and some get through and destroy the refueling planes ...causing the Raptors to run out of fuel and splash in the ocean). But hey ...I am sure those people were 'defending the Chinese.' Right? All that equipment is junk! For that matter, those Thunderchiefs I was talking about would be more than enough. Or even some updated Northrop F-5s.

Or for that matter, the Japanese can never attack pearl harbor. Their planes are junk, and they cannot fly straight anyways (something about their vision). Oh, sorry ...I channeled some pre-Pearl Harbor attack 'wisdom' there for a moment. I guess the Japanese equipment wasn't junk, and they could fly straight.

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