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Showing posts with the label Russian Mil Mi-17 Helicopter

As AgustaWestland goes down, Mi-17 gets a Mayday call ( Source- Russia & India Report / Author- Rakesh Krishnan Simha)

IAF Mil MI-17 ( Image credits- Wikimedia Commons / United States Army) Source- Russia & India Report Author- Rakesh Krishnan Simha To understand how vulnerable helicopters are to shoulder fired missiles, click here to see the devastating impact of a Russian Strela 2M on a US-made Cobra of the Turkish military. It takes the Kurdish missile team about 15 seconds to achieve visual target acquisition, after which it takes the missile less than five seconds to smash into the target. The Strela-2M has a range of 4200 metres, which comes close to the AgustaWestland AW101 helicopter’s maximum flight ceiling of 4500 metres. In comparison, the Russian Mi-17V5 helicopter has a service ceiling of 6000 metres. Given the vulnerability of relatively slow and low flying helicopters to shoulder fired missiles, India’s governing elites should have picked the more survivable Mi-17 as their transport helicopter with their eyes closed. India has acquired 151 Mi-17s for transport