On June 28, in the combat footage of the newly released Ka-52 armed helicopter by the Russian army on the battlefield in Ukraine, a very rare and thrilling scene of the missile passing by the helicopter appeared. A Ka-52 that was attacking the Ukrainian army position was suddenly ambushed by the portable air defense missile . The camera on the tail of the aircraft captured the moment when the missile was trailing smoke and speeding past ten meters from the nose of the aircraft. Very rare. The main reason why the bomb deviated when approaching the Ka-52 was that the life-saving artifact equipped with the aircraft: the Vitebsk self-defense system played a disruptive role.
Picture: A portable surface-to-air missile attacking from the right
Picture: The missile flies over the nose
The Vitebsk system of the Ka-52 armed helicopter includes two L-370-5 laser directional jammers on the belly of the aircraft , L-370-2 ultraviolet missile approach warning sensors on the nose and tail of the aircraft and UV-26 jamming bomb launchers on the wing tips on both sides. In addition, there is a set of L-140 laser warning sensors distributed on the right wing wingtip , the tail and the rear fuselage on both sides. This time, it was mainly the two sets of equipment, L-370-2 and L-370-5, that caused the incoming portable air defense missiles to deviate from the target.
Picture: Ka-52 Vitebsk system
First, the L-370-2 detected the ultraviolet signal of the incoming missile exhaust smoke, issued a warning to the pilot, and automatically performed direction finding on it, and then the right side of the belly The L-370-5 jammer on the side irradiated the seeker of the incoming missile with laser based on the direction finding information. The blinded missile could not continue to lock on the Ka-52's infrared heat signal, so it left the target. At present, all Ka-52 armed helicopters participating in the Russian army are equipped with the Vitebsk self-defense system. At the same time, one-third of the Mi-8 helicopters participating in the war and a small number of Mi-35M armed helicopters are also equipped with this system. Self-defense system.
Picture: The Vitebsk system equipped with the Russian Mi-35M participating in the war
Although about 43 Russian helicopters have been shot down since the war began, about 17 to 22 of them were equipped with the Vitebsk system. It looks like Got shot down a lot. However, if this data is combined with the total number of Russian helicopter sorties, which numbered thousands, the proportion is still very small. The Ukrainian army is equipped with a very large number of portable air defense missiles on the front line. Since the United States, Poland and Germany have provided a large number of missiles, and the Ukrainian army has a large number of former Soviet needle and needle-1 missiles in stock, Therefore, the Ukrainian army on the front line has almost reached the point where each platoon can be assigned one. In such a high-threat environment, the total number of Russian helicopter losses can be controlled at the level of dozens. Behind this, the self-defense system like Vitebsk must have played a big role.
