Fight at any time of the day and regardless of weather conditions, easily hitting targets at maximum range, and at the same time remain inaccessible to enemy weapons. All these fighting qualities are now being implemented in the new Russian attack helicopter Mi-28N "Night Hunter" (according to the NATO classification "Havoc" - "Devastator"). Izvestia decided to find out how Russian pilots master the "hunter". At the headquarters of the Air Force, our request was answered: "Go to Torzhok and watch."
The once quiet merchant Torzhok is a legendary place for our army. Here is one of the centers for the combat use of aviation, where pilots of helicopter squadrons improve their qualifications. The pilots, behind whom combat operations in Tajikistan, Chechnya, Sudan, Chad and Sierra Leone, are taught not only to pilot rotary-wing aircraft at the maximum permissible modes, but also to use them competently in battle. Today the center trains pilots for "Night Hunters".
The Mi-8 "walks" at maximum speed, dodging after the riverbed. Judging by the instruments, we are only three meters in height below us, and although the helicopter cabin in which we are sitting with Major Rustam Maidanov is just a simulator and our flight is virtual, every now and then the head starts spinning on turns. Immersion in reality is complete. There are no Mi-28N simulators in the center yet, so we are "circling" on the Mi-8. Turning over the next ledge of the mountain, we jump out onto the bridge. The control stick moves slightly towards itself, and the helicopter easily jumps over the obstacle, immediately gaining several tens of meters in height. A handle from yourself - and we steeply go down to the water.
- Where are we flying? - overlapping the noise of the engine, I ask the pilot.
- Imeretinskaya Bay, Sochi, - shouts Rustam without looking up from the management. - At first, our guys all strove to fly along the coast, to look at the sanatoriums in which they rested. Didn't draw …
- Is Krasnaya Polyana present?
- No. There are only mountains in its place.
- Can you fly to Georgia? - I ask the pilot.
“We tried,” he smiles, “beyond the Psou (the river separating Russia from Abkhazia - Izvestia), Sochi begins again … and the sea cannot reach it, it is endless.
In support of these words, Rustam turns the helicopter from the mountains to the sea, and we unexpectedly jump out onto the aircraft-carrying cruiser Admiral Kuznetsov standing off the coast. We fly closer to it, and in order for me to get a better look at the aircraft carrier, the pilot makes a spectacular turn over its deck, almost hitting the propellers behind the "parked" Su-33s. All right. And we again go to the mountains to shoot at targets.
“The Mi-28N is a very squat machine,” the head of the combat training department of the center, Colonel Andrei Popov, shares his impressions about the new helicopter.
Behind him is Tajikistan, the second Chechen campaign and Sierra Leone, where he flew the attack Mi-24. Now I have gained more than 200 hours on a brand new Mi-28N.
- Only on it you can make a turn of 70 degrees, a slide or a dive at 60 degrees. And all this by millimeter changes in the position of the control knob. The machine is very sensitive and at the same time resistant to crosswind, headwind. On the Mi-24, all this was not, - says Popov.
The Mi-28N began to be developed back in the 80s of the last century as our answer to the American AH-64 Longbow Apache. However, due to political and economic troubles, this car got into the troops only in 2006. Since 2008, it has been mastered by instructor pilots in Torzhok. In 2010, the army received a full-fledged Night Hunter squadron. Now the second is being formed. There are really hot days in Torzhok: military exercises with the participation of the Mi-28N are replaced by training flights, classes on computer simulators alternate with "paperwork". Colonel Popov's desk is literally littered with notes and notes.
“The tester teaches the helicopter to fly,” the colonel says. - We are to fight. Our task is to turn all this into combat instructions for other pilots.
"Instructions" Popov writes based on personal experience.
“We used to think of the Mi-28N as capricious machines,” he says, because we did not know how to operate them. - Now we are sure that there is no better helicopter.
“But last year, at an exercise at the Gorokhovets range, one of your Mi-28Ns fell during practical firing with precision missiles,” I am trying to catch the colonel. - They say that the engines got powder gas left by the rockets …
- The helicopter, like a child, is constantly growing, - Popov answers philosophically. - The active operation of the Mi-28N certainly reveals some shortcomings. And it is very good that the industry is very responsive to our proposals. Every six months something changes in the helicopter, new equipment and equipment appear.
Of course, I knew that Andrei Popov was just in that crashed helicopter. Only thanks to the design of the machine - shock-absorbing landing gear and the capsule, in which the pilots are located, capable of withstanding an overload of 15 g - they were able to survive after the fall. As the colonel said, the pilots then got out of the emergency vehicle, even without bruises. He kept silent about why the accident happened. Probably, the helicopter really grows like a child, and there is no need to delve into the problems of growing up that have already passed. Moreover, the episode that led to the accident is a kind of "proprietary technique" of the Mi-28N: the vehicle freezes at low altitude and fires all types of weapons at the enemy.
- From the point of view of daytime piloting of the car, we have not invented anything fundamentally new compared to, say, the Mi-24, - says Andrey Popov. - But the night use of the Mi-28N is really new in our combat tactics. Before the Mi-28N, not a single helicopter could independently conduct full-fledged night combat operations.
According to him, the main task of the "Night Hunter" is to hover at a low altitude ("somewhere behind the line") and wait for target designation from ground units. Being at this time outside the zone of direct hostilities. Received a "tip" on the target - jumped out of an ambush, launched high-precision missiles and again went into cover. All maneuvers at speeds up to 324 km per hour and at heights from five to 150 meters.
“The experience of modern military conflicts has shown that a helicopter has only 10 seconds to attack a target,” says Popov. - Then he will definitely be shot down, even in spite of the serious booking of the car. The onboard equipment of the Mi-28N guarantees the fulfillment of the combat mission. At the same time, I do not have to search and classify the target myself. Its coordinates will be transmitted to me from the ground or another helicopter. I just need to make a maneuver and shoot,”says Colonel Popov.
When you look at the Mi-28N from the outside and see the large screws that fastened the car's skin, you immediately understand that it was created more than a dozen years ago. Modern airplanes and helicopters are not so "riveted". The modernity of the Mi-28N is, of course, inside: liquid crystal displays, radar stations and computers doing most of the complex work. All this makes the Mi-28N the only helicopter in the world capable of flying both in manual and automatic modes at an altitude of five meters, rounding the terrain day and night, in adverse weather conditions.
“Many operations are automated,” Popov explains. “I just need to put a" marker "on the display showing the target. The computer itself will calculate the distance to it, make corrections for wind, weather, and plot the optimal route to reach the target, taking into account the terrain.
For this, it is responsible for the multifunctional radar "Arbalet". The station automatically warns of obstacles: detached trees and power lines. As the pilots say, "Crossbow" sees even a detached person at night at a distance of 500 meters, and looks at the terrain for several tens of kilometers. In a night flight, the pilot can use night vision goggles and an aerobatic thermal imaging station, which additionally provide a picture in the dark both along the course of the vehicle's flight and in the direction of the pilot's head rotation.
- At the Zapad-2009 exercises, - the pilot recalls, - we had to work in the rain and heavy smoke of targets. Line of sight did not exceed 1.5 km. But with the help of television and heat cameras, we were able to detect them at distances of 3 km and hit them with guided missiles. This would have been impossible on the Mi-24. From it they shoot only at targets in line of sight.
Flying with night vision goggles is a new thing for Russian helicopter pilots. Actually, they make the possibility of secret night use of the Mi-28N the main trump card of the machine. According to Popov, today they learn not only to hunt at night, but also practice the tasks of evacuating the wounded from the front line. The very compact car has a small compartment in which, if necessary, you can transport a person.
- How to ensure stealth when the car's engines roar enough? - I ask the pilot.
- The helicopter is designed in such a way that until you see it, - he explains, - it is absolutely impossible to understand in which direction it is. And here it is just very important that we can approach the target, hiding behind the folds of the terrain. Until the last, remaining invisible to the enemy.
In modern warfare, experts say, everything is decided not by the quantity, but by the quality of weapons. Judging by how they learn to use the Mi-28N in Torzhok, this is exactly the case. In any case, the Russian Air Force received one of the most advanced helicopters in the world.
