Coming up next on Bravo...
On this episode of Firepower, an exclusive look at the Russian Air Force.
Soar over the Iron Curtain in a Soviet MiG fighter and hover into enemy territory in a Havok attack helicopter.
Learn the secrets of Russian Pirates and find out why they're so feared.
Step aside, Blue Angels, and make room for the Red Falcons.
The Soviet Air Forces are organized in a different fashion from most NATO Air Forces.
In fact, there are three distinct Air Forces.
The main Air Force, called the VVS in Russian.
The Air Defense Force, called PVO.
And the aviation branch of the Navy, the AVMF.
The main Air Force, the VVS, controls tactical aircraft like the MiG-29 fighter.
The Sukhoi-25 ground attack aircraft.
Combat helicopters like the MI-28 Havok.
Strategic bombers like the TU-95 Bear, transport aircraft, and others.
Air Defense Forces control strategic defense forces like the new SU-27 Flanker,
and the MiG-31 Foxhound interceptors, and surface-to-air missiles.
The Naval Air Force is the smallest branch, and includes ship-based helicopters like the Ka-25 Hormone,
and naval fighters like the Yak-38 Forger.
In the Soviet Union, aircraft are named after the head of the Design Bureau which developed them.
For example, the Sukhoi SU-28 is named after Pavel Sukhoi, who headed the Bureau until his death in 1975.
The name most synonymous with Soviet fighters is MiG.
MiG is an abbreviation of the names Mikoyan and Gurevich, the original founders of the MiG Design Bureau.
The current head of the MiG Bureau is Rostislav Belyakov.
Belyakov joined the Mikoyan Bureau on the eve of World War II during the design of the MiG-3 fighter,
eventually rising through the ranks to head the most important Soviet fighter design bureau.
In 1957, I became a deputy chief designer involved in control systems.
In 1962, I was appointed the first deputy principal designer,
and since that time I have been participating across the wide range of all operations.
In other words, I supervise the work starting with the MiG-25 up to the latest ones, MiG-27, MiG-29 and MiG-31.
We haven't shown the MiG-31 yet, but I believe that we will in the future.
It serves with the PVO air defense forces.
Soviet aircraft are designed with different priorities from many Western aircraft.
This is explained by a noted expert on Soviet aviation, Sergei Sikorsky, son of the legendary Russian-American aircraft pioneer Igor Sikorsky.
Almost invariably, the Soviet aircraft will be slightly heavier than its Western counterpart.
Almost invariably, it will have adequate technology, adequate for the job that it is expected to do.
It will not be gold-plated. Any technology that is not required for that specific mission and for that specific job will not find a place on that aircraft,
simply because of the fact that the aircraft are designed more for combat,
whereas our machines, I dare say, are designed for peacetime use and may eventually see combat.
This is born of the Soviets' experiences in World War II where simple, rugged aircraft were used.
It's also part of the Soviet philosophy that says to them that if you use aircraft,
use them the way you would use tanks and armored vehicles and people.
That is, you throw great masses of them against the enemy and you make your tactical decisions
and you make your victories irregardless of the losses that you suffer.
Consequently, you need somewhat cheaper, easier-to-build machines in large quantities.
Firepower will return on The Discovery.
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The MiG-29 Fulcrum is the latest product of the Mikoyan Design Bureau.
The MiG-29 was developed in the mid-1970s as a frontal fighter for the Soviet Air Force,
replacing the older MiG-23 Flogger.
In terms of size and performance, it is most similar to the McDonnell F-18 Hornet Strike Fighter.
It is often compared to the General Dynamics F-16, but the MiG-29 is in fact considerably larger
and heavier than the F-16.
The MiG-29 is a robust and highly maneuverable fighter,
as was amply displayed by demonstrations at the Farnborough Air Show in 1988
and at the Paris Air Show in 1989.
The head of the Mikoyan Bureau compares his latest fighter to current NATO designs.
First of all, not one of the other fighters here has the power-to-weight ratio of ours.
Secondly, we have a very successful combination of advanced aerodynamic configuration
and high thrust, which permits its use in a wide range of flight profiles.
The integrated fire controls of the MiG-29 consist of an RP-29 slot-back radar,
which is linked to a laser rangefinder and an infrared pointer mounted in front of the cockpit.
Unlike radar, the infrared pointer does not emit an electronic signal,
which can be detected by an enemy aircraft.
All modern fighters have radar warning receivers, which pick up radar emissions
and warn the pilot he is being scanned by another aircraft.
The MiG-29 fire controls allow the pilot to leave his radar off
and sneak up on an opponent unannounced by his radar signal.
The infrared pointer picks up the heat given off by the enemy aircraft, such as its engine exhaust.
The MiG-29 compares very favorably to Western aircraft like the F-16 or the F-18 Hornet
as far as high speed and maneuverability are concerned.
One of the more breathtaking maneuvers performed by the MiG test pilots is a hammerhead stall,
where the pilot actually allows the fighter to slide backwards for a few moments before regaining speed.
These maneuvers are all the more remarkable considering that the current versions of the MiG-29
do not use advanced computerized fly-by-wire flight controls as on the F-16 or the F-18.
The Soviet designers typically use less advanced technologies than on comparable Western designs,
but they exploit the older technologies to the fullest extent possible,
so that they offer performance comparable to the more advanced technological approaches.
This is our last plane with the usual mechanical control system.
All future aircraft produced by our firm will be fitted with fly-by-wire controls.
This plane was designed many years ago, and at the time we didn't have much engineering experience with fly-by-wire.
As a result, we used a mechanical control system, but we added automatic features in all the control channels.
The MiG-29 Fulcrum is fitted with an advanced ejection seat,
which demonstrated its effectiveness during a freak accident at the 1989 Paris Air Show.
The right engine failed when it ingested a bird. Remarkably, the pilot survived without a single broken bone.
This slow-motion replay shows the accident in more detail.
The engine fails.
The pilot tries unsuccessfully to regain control.
The rocket-propelled ejection seat clears the aircraft.
The drogue chute opens the pilot's main parachute.
The pilot is clear of the aircraft crash.
The MiG-29 Fulcrum is the most potent fighter with Soviet frontal aviation today.
Its impressive performance puts it in the first ranks of today's combat fighters.
Firepower will return on the Discovery.
In contrast to the MiG-29's sophistication, the Sukhoi-25 Frogfoot is a far simpler aircraft.
It is designed to operate in the deadly low-altitude environment as a light attack aircraft.
In an era where most combat aircraft have been designed around the motto
higher, faster, farther, the Sukhoi-25 was designed around the motto
closer, lower, and quieter.
The aircraft we see here is the SU-28 Frogfoot, a combat trainer version of the SU-25 attack aircraft.
NATO nicknames the Sukhoi-25 Frogfoot, but to its Russian pilots it's called Grach after a type of Russian crow.
The Frogfoot is a close air support aircraft.
It's used for knocking out enemy tanks.
It's like a mud fighter.
It gets down and fights in support of ground forces, broadly similar to the US Air Force's A-10 tank buster.
And its history stems back to the Second World War when the Soviet Union developed what was called a Shturmovik,
which was like a very tough, rugged aircraft to attack ground forces.
The Sukhoi-25 resembles a cross between the European Jaguar and the American A-10.
It is smaller and about 50% lighter than the A-10, although they share similar mission.
As in the case of the A-10, the Sukhoi-25 is well protected with a pilot sitting in a bathtub of titanium armour.
The armament of the SU-25 includes a twin 30mm cannon in the nose, which can be used to attack light armoured vehicles.
The wings can carry up to eight 500 kilogram bombs or missiles.
The Frogfoot was first employed in combat over Afghanistan in 1980.
It was dubbed the German jet by the Mujahideen resistance fighters.
It received this unusual name because of the Mujahideen's contempt for the poor accuracy of other Soviet jet bombers.
In contrast, the Frogfoot was respected and feared as a very potent attack aircraft.
The greatest enemy of the SU-25 Frogfoot in Afghanistan was man-portable missiles like the American Stinger missile.
This aircraft was flown by Colonel Alexander Rutskoi, who was shot down in another Frogfoot by a Stinger in 1985.
To counter the Stinger, the Soviets added a flare system to the rear of the aircraft.
An infrared guided missile senses the hot exhaust of the aircraft's engines.
The flares create false heat images, which can confuse the missile as to the real location of the aircraft.
Beside the basic ground attack version, there are also trainer versions of the Frogfoot, like the SU-28 general purpose trainer.
The SU-28 we see here is becoming the standard jet trainer for Soviet jet aviators, replacing the old Big 17 trainer.
It is a stable, dependable aircraft, well suited for training purposes.
It is also being used to train the first generation of Soviet carrier aviators for the new Soviet full deck carrier.
It is being used to familiarize Soviet pilots with the difficult skill of arrested deck landings.
The new MI-28 Havok attack helicopter will replace the MI-24 Hind in the 1990s.
The Havok design stems from Soviet experiences in Afghanistan, especially the heavy losses of helicopters due to ground fire from rifles and machine guns.
Yes, I think that the interest of the Soviet Air Force in Afghanistan began to turn very rapidly from fixed wing close air support into helicopters.
I believe you can see the statistics speak for themselves.
They started with about 75% fixed wing aircraft and about 25% helicopters.
By the final phases of the Afghani campaign, the proportions were almost reversed. About 75% of the aircraft and the missions and the sorties were being flown by helicopter.
What makes the Havok different from the Hind, very simply, is the Afghani campaign.
What the Soviets did was collect all of the experience gained in Afghanistan and decided that what they needed is a machine that would become a dedicated close air support Sturmovik helicopter, the next generation Sturmovik helicopter.
The first thing that they realized was that the machine had to survive small arms fire, so they designed it to be practically untouchable by 7.65 and something like 95% untouchable even by 12.7, by 50 caliber.
They then proceeded to develop some very ingenious crew survival techniques so that even in the very, very difficult case that the aircraft would be disabled, the crew would survive.
The Havok is armed with a 30 millimeter autocannon under the nose that can fire either high explosive or armor piercing ammunition.
On the wing pylons, our rocket launches for 40 unguided rockets and rails for a further 16 guided AT-6 spiral anti-tank missiles.
The AT-6 spiral missiles allow the Havok to attack tanks from a distance of three and a half miles away.
The missiles are guided by a small antenna in the nose of the aircraft.
The potent anti-tank weaponry of the Havok permits it to support Soviet armored units during mechanized operations.
The new MI-28 Havok that was first shown in Paris at Le Bourget impressed most of us very, very much by its dedication, by its size and by its ruggedness.
It is an aircraft that it is designed to go out with Soviet armor and to live and to eat and to sleep with Soviet armor for three to four to five days at a stretch,
without seeing an air base, without seeing a sophisticated maintenance facility.
The aircraft has been compared to some equivalent machines such as the Apache and the Mangusta.
I would rather like to put it into a different category because after all it is 50 percent, nearly 50 percent heavier than the Apache, nearly 50 percent larger than the Apache.
It is a very, very interesting example of a dedicated air-to-ground machine with very, very excellent maneuvering and performance characteristics
and certainly a very serious capability in the air-to-air role.
The Soviet Havok and the American Apache share similar flight performance.
The Apache has the advantage of more sophisticated night attack features.
But the Havok is very well suited for its mission of close air support of Soviet ground forces on the modern battlefield.
As the veil of secrecy slowly lifts from Soviet aviation, we are beginning to gain a new understanding of Soviet combat aircraft.
Soviet aircraft designs are shaped by different priorities from NATO aircraft.
Their avionics are often less sophisticated.
But there can be no doubt of the superb aerodynamic performance of the Red Falcons.
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On this episode of Firepower, you've got security clearance to board the most top-secret planes in the world.
Fly undetected through enemy radar aboard the B-2 Advanced Strategic Bomber and marvel at the bizarre and deadly F-117 Black Jet.
Using stealth technology, these night fighters can make themselves practically invisible.
It's a game of now you see them, now you don't, with the stealth jets next.
For decades, air forces have attempted to reduce the vulnerability of their aircraft by making them less visible to the enemy.
The traditional method has been camouflage painting.
But since World War II, radar has gradually become the principal means of detecting aircraft.
Radar can detect aircraft from hundreds of miles away, and it can be used to guide deadly anti-aircraft missiles with pinpoint precision.
Stealth technology attempts to camouflage aircraft from radar just as camouflage paint was designed to hide aircraft from enemy view.
A radar works by sending out a focused beam of electromagnetic radiation.
Some of the radiation reflects off the aircraft, returning to the radar antenna.
Reflected energy determines what the radar can see and what it cannot see.
The wizard war to blind radar began in World War II.
Bombers dropped thin strips of aluminum foil called chaff.
Carried by the winds, these formed huge clouds on enemy radar screens, making it impossible to determine the precise location of the attacking bombers.
By the 1950s, advances in radar technology allowed radars to see through the obscuring cloud of chaff.
Its place was taken by electronic jamming.
Aircraft carried electronic countermeasure systems which sent out a strong signal.
They blinded the radar by overwhelming the reflected radar signal with a stronger false signal.
Every new technology provokes a countermeasure.
By the 1970s, jamming could be circumvented by new frequency hopping radars.
A curious little missile of the 1960s suggested another approach.
The Quail decoy missile emphasized that the visibility of an airplane to radar was determined as much by its shape as its size.
Certain shapes, such as 90-degree corners, concentrate radar signals and reflect them strongly.
The Quail exploited these features so that it would appear as large as a B-52 bomber to enemy radars.
The B-52 bombers could launch several Quails on false headings, confusing the enemy about the number and location of the real bombers.
If the Quail could appear larger on radar than it really was, could aircraft be configured to look smaller or even disappear?
This idea led to low observability technology, popularly called stealth today.
One of the first aircraft to incorporate low observability technology was the Ryan Firebee unmanned reconnaissance drone.
Surfaces which reflected radar strongly, such as the rotating blades of its jet engine, were hidden deep inside the airframe.
This tiny robot spy plane also incorporated a new type of material as its skin called RAM for radar absorbent material.
RAM soaks up radar energy like a sponge, preventing it from reflecting back to the radar.
Tests found that these drones reflected radar energy so weakly that they had become virtually invisible to radar.
In the 1960s, another spy plane appeared in the US Air Force service, the legendary Lockheed SR-71.
The SR-71 was one of the first manned aircraft to employ stealth low observability technology.
The SR-71 was not invisible to radar, but its use of radar absorbent material helped reduce its visibility.
Another example of the impact of low observability technology is the B-1 bomber.
The original version of the B-1, the B-1A, had a radar cross section of one square meter, ten times less than the older B-52.
Due to the threat posed by new advances in radar guided missiles, it was redesigned with additional low observable features as the improved B-1B.
The B-1B version had a radar cross section of only about one tenth of a square meter, one one hundredth that of the older B-52 bomber.
The improvement between the B-1A and the B-1B hinted at the potential of this new advance in the Wizard War.
The question was, if low observability technology could reduce the visibility of aircraft, could it actually make them disappear?
Firepower will return on the Discovery Channel.
In 1978, the United States Air Force contracted the famous skunkworks of Lockheed aircraft to begin design of a stealth strike fighter, codenamed Senior Trend.
Unlike the SR-71 or the B-1B, the Senior Trend would be designed from the ground up with low observability features.
Tests had shown that by carefully shaping the contours of the fuselage, the aircraft's radar cross section could be reduced dramatically.
This resulted in the very unusual shape of the Senior Trend, later named the F-117A.
The first flight of the F-117 took place in June 1981.
The program was so secret that pilots recruited for the program were not told their actual assignment.
It was cloaked under a fictitious program to improve the avionics on the A-7 attack aircraft.
When I entered the program, what I was told was I was going to be doing avionics testing on A-7s.
That's the premise we went in. We were briefed on the program about a month or two after we started A-7 training.
It was under the cover of A-7 avionics work. I had maybe in the back of my mind three or four different things it could possibly be.
But it wasn't until I got here they put us in the closed room and told us what the program was.
As unique as the F-117 appears, its novelty is only skin deep.
To speed up development of this revolutionary new design, many of its internal components came from other successful aircraft programs.
The decision was made to make the airplane in minimum time with full capability that was desired at the time.
In order to do that, a lot of off-the-shelf equipment had to be taken.
As to the exact percentage, I couldn't comment on that, but I will give you a couple of examples.
The flight control system we said is the F-16 flight control system.
The ejection seat is the ACES-2 ejection seat, the same one that's in the F-15, F-16, and A-10.
The environmental control system is partially out of a C-130.
The engines are GE-404 engines, the same engines that are used in the F-A-18.
The brake systems, the original brake systems were off a Gulfstream III civilian aircraft,
and there were many other black box type components that were off the shelf.
What that does, obviously, is it gives you a known system capability when you put it in the airplane,
and it also allows these folks over here who maintain the aircraft to know exactly what they're getting into with those components.
And so we were able to capitalize both on a known capability and a known reliability maintainability side.
By 1983, the first stealth fighters were in service.
Their pilots quickly dubbed them the Black Jet.
Those of us in the unit, since most of us came into the unit before,
we could even whisper the word stealth or F-117, have always referred to it as the Black Jet.
And there is no name that has become affectionate for us to refer to the airplane.
The nickname Black Jet stems from its special black paint finish, codenamed iron ball.
This type of paint reportedly helps diffuse radar reflections.
Every tiny detail of the F-117 has been carefully thought through to minimize radar reflection.
Engine fan blades are one of the worst offenders, so the stealth fighters' engines are buried deep in the fuselage.
Its air intakes are covered by a special grill that minimizes the reflection of radar energy.
Another common source of strong radar reflections is the cockpit.
On ordinary aircraft, the radar travels through the plexiglass canopy and reflects off the many objects inside the cockpit.
On the F-117, the canopy is coated with a special metallic material to prevent the radar energy entering the cockpit.
Another source of strong radar reflection is the wing-mounted missile pylon.
So on the stealth fighter, the missiles are carried inside the aircraft in a special bomb bay in the belly.
Even ordinary straight panel lines can reflect radar energy.
So on the stealth fighter, the majority of the aircraft is covered with special radar absorbent material.
Where panel lines remain, such as here around the night sensor on the nose,
the panels have a sawtooth edge to better scatter the radar energy.
Unlike most strike fighters, which use radar to find their targets, the black jet uses a thermal imaging night sensor.
A radar would give off an electronic signal that could be detected by an enemy force.
The thermal sight picks up the temperature difference between the objects on the ground
and provides the pilot with a ghostly video image of the earth below him, even on the darkest moonless nights.
Ground attack missions have always been the most dangerous combat assignments.
In an age of radar-guided anti-aircraft missiles, they've become even more so.
The role of the F-117 black jet is designed specifically for this mission.
Its specialty is the most challenging night attack.
It is designed to sneak into enemy airspace without being detected
and to attack pinpoint targets with laser-guided bombs and precision-guided missiles.
The F-117 is a one-mission, unique aircraft.
It is a night attack fighter to go against critical, high-leverage targets with pinpoint accuracy.
The first combat missions of the F-117 were flown in 1989 during Operation Just Cause in Panama.
The combination of stealth features and precision attack electronics
gives the black jet a unique capability for deep strike missions under the cloak of darkness.
Higher power will return on the Discovery.
In the late 1970s, the United States Air Force set out to prove it could be done.
The results are evident in this very exotic aircraft, the Northrop B-2 advanced technology bomber.
Although precise information is still classified,
the B-2 is believed to have a radar cross-section, an order of magnitude less than the already stealthy B-1B.
Although similar in size to the older B-52 bomber, the B-2 is probably several hundred times less visible to radar.
It is impossible to make an aircraft totally invisible to radar,
but its radar cross-section can be reduced to such an extent
that its radar reflection cannot be distinguished from normal background radiation.
It has been suggested that the B-2 has a frontal radar cross-section
similar to that of a large insect such as a bumblebee.
The additional stealth capabilities of the B-2 were sought because of the mission of strategic bombers.
The main opponent of strategic bombers today is the radar-guided anti-aircraft missile.
These missile sites are set up behind an interlocking barrier of radars.
The map here shows how far each radar can see when searching for a conventional aircraft such as the B-52.
The bomber cannot get through the radar line without being seen by at least one of the radars.
The features added to the B-1B reduces the effectiveness of such a barrier
by decreasing the range at which the bomber could be detected.
This creates gaps through which the B-1B can pass undetected.
Such a radar net is even less effective against the B-2 bomber
since there are even larger gaps in their coverage.
What cannot be seen by radar cannot be targeted by radar-guided missiles.
The B-2's stealth features are contained in its unique shape.
The B-2 looks very different from the F-117 stealth fighter
since it uses more recent low observability technology.
The B-2 is essentially a flying wing,
patterned after earlier flying wings developed by Northrop in the late 1940s.
The B-2 has no large tail surfaces to reflect radar energy.
Its flight controls in the trailing edge of the wing are computer controlled for stability.
Its engines are hidden in the wings with air intakes located on the top of the wing
where radar cannot easily see.
The surfaces of the bomber are covered with radar absorbent material
to further weaken the reflection of radar from its surfaces.
Surprisingly, it is manned by only two crewmen compared to four in the B-1B bomber.
Everything that we've done so far in flight tests
has been very close to what we predicted in our simulation.
The cockpit is very friendly.
It's similar to a FB-111 where you have side-by-side seating,
so it cuts down a lot of intercom traffic that you have in other large airplanes.
This airplane is very compact and it moves in unity.
The pilot really feels that he's part of the airplane as he goes through his maneuver.
So in that respect, it's more like a fighter.
I remember one particular thing on Flight 3.
I put the throttles to just below max continuous thrust.
The airplane just accelerated away and it really caught the chase airplanes by surprise.
They just couldn't believe that this big an airplane could accelerate that fast.
That Jance is an airplane that really wants to fly.
It's going to have that really good payload capability and just incredible range.
Of course, those things are what you're looking for in an airplane.
The peculiar engine exhaust on the B-2 bomber and the F-117 fighter
reveal another aspect of stealth technology.
Since these designs so effectively counter radar detection,
an enemy force might be tempted to use another means to determine their location.
Sound detectors tested in combat since World War I have proven to be largely ineffective.
The most likely candidate as a backup sensor is the infrared detector,
which picks up heat differences between the aircraft and the natural background.
As in the case of radar, infrared technology can also be used for missile guidance,
but missile homing in on the hot exhaust gases of a jet engine.
The F-117 black jet uses an infrared detector instead of radar.
Soviet fighters such as the MiG-29 and the Sukhoi-27 use infrared detectors to supplement their radar
and are armed with both radar guided and infrared guided missiles.
The unusual engine outlets on the B-2 and the F-117 contain design features
to defeat infrared sensors and infrared guided missiles.
How these systems work is still highly classified,
but probably includes methods to reduce the heat signature of the engine.
The unique features of the B-2 and the sophistication of its design have led to a stiff price tag.
The B-2 advanced technology bomber is currently estimated to cost over a half billion dollars apiece,
making it the most expensive warplane ever proposed for series production.
The F-117 and the B-2 are not the last word in stealth aircraft.
Other combat aircraft are under development such as the YF-22 and the YF-23 advanced tactical fighters.
But the B-2 and the black jet will go down in the pages of aviation history as the pioneers of stealth technology.
On takeoff and landing, the huge air inlets to the MiG-29's R-33D engines are shut off
to avoid ingesting slush, stones or water, the air being sucked in from above.
Despite this, the MiG-29A has the amazingly short combat takeoff run of 240 meters or 790 feet.
The pilot can then pull straight up into a vertical climb with the unrivaled climb rate of 330 meters per second or 65,000 feet per minute.
At Farnborough, however, one of the surprises was to stop the MiG in midair and then let it fall back in a tail slide.
MiG pilots have found that by hovering motionless, they can confuse enemy radars,
which rely on Doppler effects caused by the motion of the target.
Back in July 1986, a special detachment of six MiG-29As of an earlier subtype flew from Kubinka Air Base near Moscow to an airfield in Finland.
This goodwill visit gave Western observers their first close-up view of a modern Soviet combat aircraft,
though in 1986 even the MiG-29 had already been flying for nine years.
An interesting display was put on by a Singleton aircraft.
This was followed by a pleasant show by four of the fighters flying formation aerobatics.
At the time, it was not really appreciated how restrained this display was,
giving not the slightest hint of the MiG-29's superb strength, agility, and surplus of engine thrust.
Today, in fact, we realize that a MiG-29 could actually put on a very impressive display
with a ratio of thrust to weight of roughly unity, with one engine shut down.
The F-18 should stack up against just about any aircraft in the world.
I don't know if I'm allowed to tell you which aircraft it compares considerable to,
but most aircraft I wouldn't be worried at all to go into an engagement with.
The F-18 is as maneuverable as any of them, and therefore in a lot of cases it's going to come down to the pilot.
From modest beginnings, the Soviet helicopter designers today rank second to none.
The Mill Bureau produced a helicopter in 1956, which dwarfed all others.
Even this one, the Mi-8, is bigger and more powerful than its western counterpart, the Sea Key.
And despite its impressive capability, which includes an internal payload of over 8,800 pounds,
it has been built in fantastic numbers, exceeding 10,000.
Vehicles can drive in through rear doors, but here loads of 24 armed troops are being inserted in an exercise.
Large numbers of Mi-8s played a central role in Afghanistan.
There, hundreds have been deployed, serving with both Soviet and Afghan government forces, often around the clock.
They were, however, increasingly likely to encounter fire from the Mujahideen.
To try to crush all resistance, the heavily armed Mi-24 was also used in Afghanistan.
This big gunship helicopter can fly attack, anti-tank, troop transport, electronic warfare, and special reconnaissance missions.
An indication of the performance of the Mi-24 was given by a world speed record of 229 miles per hour in 1978.
During army exercises, the Soviets used Mi-24s and fixed-wing attack aircraft in conjunction with rapidly moving ground forces,
frequently equipped with light armor to break through the enemy's defenses.
Mi-24s are also used in the anti-tank role.
They are also often used to support river crossings and the seizure of strategic objectives.
The use of attack helicopters coupled with an armored thrust can be devastating.
In the real war in Afghanistan, however, things were tougher,
and convoys of trucks often brought back shot-down helicopters and even IL-28 jet bombers.
Like the Mi-8, the Mi-24 gunship was deployed to Afghanistan in large numbers.
One of the few anti-aircraft weapons available to the Mujahideen was the small Stinger missile.
To counter this weapon's infrared homing head, the Soviet aircraft used to release bright flares, the standard infrared countermeasure.
On the other hand, Stinger itself gained a reputation for unreliability.
Here an Mi-24 gunship flies over a Stinger well within range, but the missile failed to lock on to the target.
To help support the beleaguered Sandinista government in Nicaragua,
the Soviet Union supplied 30 large helicopters in 1986, including six of these Hind Ds.
They are fully equipped with all the electronics needed for night and bad weather operations,
and are the only machines of their type in the Western Hemisphere.
They have been used mainly for the tactical support of the troop-carrying helicopters, but can themselves carry troops in the rear cabin.
Like all Soviet equipment, the Mi-24 is tough and designed to survive in harsh environments.
Many Western observers have scorned Soviet design as being crude and backward,
but each Soviet weapon is the end product of a very carefully considered design process,
and its inputs are harsher and more demanding than those in the West.
The Mi-24 is equipped with a single-barreled anti-tank gun,
and is capable of firing a single shot at a target.
The Mi-24 is equipped with a single-barreled anti-tank gun,
and is capable of firing a single shot at a target.
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