Soon after Moscow began its air campaign in Syria, both supporters and opponents of the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad began posting videos of attacks by Russian Mi-24 attack helicopters, a hybrid transport aircraft and gunship unique to the Russian military. And it is the low-flying Mi-24, not warplanes flattening the Syrian landscape from thousands of feet up, that has the potential to hand Assad’s beleaguered military some much-needed battlefield wins.
The videos show the Mi-24s, also known as Hind helicopters, flying close to the ground — sometimes just above the treetops — and often in pairs, firing off barrages of rockets at nearby rebel positions.
Syrian pilots have long flown Russian helicopters, so there’s no way to conclusively tell who’s in the cockpit. But close observers of the conflict say it’s likely that Russians are piloting the aircraft because of the technical skill of the pilots and the fact that the specific models being flown are newer versions of the Mi-24s known to be in the Syrian arsenal. The helicopters shown in the recent videos, for instance, have two 30 mm guns instead of the single, smaller gun found on older models, according to Nick de Larrinaga, the Europe editor of Jane’s Defence Weekly.
Christopher Harmer, an analyst at the Institute for the Study of War and a 20-year veteran of the U.S. Navy, said a video of a pair of Mi-24s flying low to the ground and firing rockets showed a “top shelf, highly trained, very courageous, and highly aggressive Russian helicopter crew.”
“When you see higher quality airmanship and precision fires coming from helicopters, that’s 100 percent Russian pilots,” he said.
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https://foreignpolicy.com/2015/10/14/this-helicopter-is-putins-weapon-of-choice-in-syria/YAY!!! My girl!!!
