They are cheap and with new targeting systems – highly effective.
I don’t agree. If you’re going to fight against even the most poorly equiped enemies you need to keep your expensive new (or expensively upgraded) aircraft well outside the range of (at the very least) short ranged SAMs. Try doing this with rockets and you’ll either hit nothing or you will get killed. In Georgia, Russian Frogfoots used unguided rockets en masse. Sure they inflicted terror casualties but they did very little real damage when they had the perfect opportunity to. Ok, so it didn’t affect the outcome of that particular war but it might for the next one.
You do not need a Vikhr to take out terrorists in Chechnya, which is the most common thing that these choppers will be doing. Or attacking enemy infantry. I highly doubt that Kamov is ever going to face columns of tanks..
Unless there is a repeat of the Georgian conflict (before which, I’m sure people were saying “oh, there’s no way Russian AF Frogfoots are going to be attacking armoured columns these days, they’re just there to scare a few terrorists back into the woods”).
Its unimpressive. Even for light-scale counter insurgency, the Russian AF needs to be able to hit pin-point targets in all weather, day and night, from reasonable stand-off distances. WWII tactics and weapons don’t cut it anymore.
DISCLAIMER: I’m sort of playing devil’s advocate here. I know the RuAF operate more modern weapons than rockets and iron bombs but it would be nice to see a spike in their use as has happened in the West and elsewhere. I also know that using up stocks is a cheap and satisfyingly noisy way to train pilots/get nice pictures… that isn’t what I’m criticising per se.
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