I am a trainee at Eurocopter

Hope you’re enjoying your time there, they’re a good crowd. Which site?

Italian Avionics has never been used by Eurocopter

I was informally told that a certain Italian company was discussing a family concept based on its NH90 kit.

The original idea behind the A149 (as it was at the time) [b]was[/b] that it would be a relatively minor development of the AW139 focused on the military market. However the aircraft has gradually grown over time, and is now being influenced by the EC175 and NMT, which have moved the goalposts wrt MTOW. Sikorsky’s lightweight International Black Hawk plans are also influencing which part of the marketplace the AW149 is ultimately aimed at.

Wouldn’t it be better to choose a type like the Tiger….and why was this one not in the competition ???

Yes, and it was. The deselection of the Tiger was partly political (Armenia) and partly cost (EC’s Fabrice Bregier: “Turkey decided to go for a low-cost solution which is in tune with older requirements.”).

The A129I has been the front-runner throughout this process, and I still find it difficult to see the CSH-2 as anything but a stalking horse, if for no other reason that EU politics (i.e. buying an RSA platform doesn’t do much for Turkey’s entry into the Union).

How many times has a decision about the turkish future attack chopper been announced ?

Depends on whether you count all the occassions on which Kamov has claimed to have ‘been selected’… :diablo:

And all the while the program size falls…from 145…to 91…to 50…to 30… personally I blame the Greeks ! 😀

Denel teamed up with Marshall Aerospace (best known for its C-130 activities) to offer the Rooivalk for the UK AH program.

The Ka-50 entered ‘service’ in August 1995, though the status at the time was closer to the Western definition of operational evaluation. 2 aircraft were used in Chechnya in the winter of 2001/2002, and Kamov was expecting to receive an order for 12 Ka-52s (against a total ‘requirement’ for 60-80). However, in October 2004 funding for the Ka-50/52 program was suspended as a result of the RuAF’s decision the previous December to select the Mi-28N as its preferred platform.

Total production to date has been 15 Ka-50s, including prototypes and pre-production aircraft, with only 5 actually having entered RuAF service. There are reportedly 17 partially-assembled Ka-50 airframes still sitting at the Arseniyev production, and the plant’s GM claimed last spring that the Defense Ministry had agreed to acquire three more Ka-50s and re-launch the Ka-52 program. To the best of my knowledge, funding for these aircraft is still up in the air.

I have to say the Ka-54 designation is new to me as well. Are sure this isn’t an inadvertent reference to the growth Ka-62 study (Ka-64) ?

…nobody seems to know just where that one disappeared to…

Ditto for some of the variable cycle YF120s…

That’s a nice pic of the door mounted cannon for the Rapid Airborne Mine Clearance System (RAMICS).

‘Course, the interesting thing about the 30mm Mk44 system is the dynamic properties of its supercavitating ammo, which is capable of penetrating several inches of metal even after traveling some way through the water. Mine clearance is not its only function!