Double roter helicopter?

Who know its name?

its a russian Ka-50 attack helicopter isn't it ?

Yeah, Ka-50 "Hokum" apparently...

Honestly I don't even care if it's good or not: looks so damn evil I want one.

Supposedly the Mi-28N is supposed to be the new attack helicopter for the Russian army while the Ka-50/52 is supposed to do special forces support. Don't ask me why things worked out that way, could be the Russians just wanting to give business to both companies.

Supposedly one of the biggest issues with the Ka-50 is it's single seat design, which probably explains the recent announcement that production will be reconfigured to concentrate on the two seat Ka-52 derivative. Apparently conducting combat operations in an attack helicopter at low altitude can be a bit much for a one person crew. (Supposedly in one test, a two seat Mi-28 was much more successful at finding targets without being detected then a single seat Ka-50, though I don't know if the Mi-28 involved was a N model or not -that could make a difference, see next paragraph.)

Actually, it would seem that the Ka-50 was supposed to be the main new attack helicopter, then it became the Mi-28N. Could partly be politics, but there are a number of other things that could have contributed to the change. For one thing, the Ka-50 had some testing accidents. Also, Mikhail decided to give up on the Mi-28A daylight model because it wasn't sufficiently competitive with the Ka-50 and concentrated on making a Mi-28N model which had sensors for nighttime and poor weather operations. Apparently the Russians eventually decided that was an important capability, and when combined with the above testing accidents and the fact that the Mi-28 had more in common with the Mi-24s already in service...

There are versions of the Ka-50 equipped with more sensors as well, but those might be a more recent development.

As far as contra rotating main rotors in general go however, they're supposedly more stable and use engine power much more efficiently then a conventional main and tail rotor set up. So there are definitely some pluses to such a set up. I can see it being particularly useful for a heavy lift helicopter (actually, the Chinook transport helicopter has two rotors, although they're mounted in different spots on the chopper so it's not quite the same as the set up on something like this Kamov...)

It's ugly, but in a lethal way. I'd imagine the vulnerability that comes with a tail-rotor and drive-shaft is not a problem in a counter-rotor design, as any serious hit to the main rotor of either will kill it, where a hit to the tail or shaft of a conventional copter will cripple or kill it.

Russians always did design their helos different. While a platoon-carrying gunship like the Hind is certainly impressive, it's a bit limited in it's uses because of it's manuverability, especially when it carries the full armament of an attack helo in addition to the troops.

I actually had an old book from the cold war era that thought the Mi-24 was meant to be a gunship and that the troop carrying capability was simply included because the Soviets put a high value on the ability of helicopters to transport troops. If wikipedia's sources are accurate in this case though it actually was originally designed as a sort of flying infantry fighting vehicle. Interesting concept, but I'm not sure that's really how it tended to work out in the real world. I get the impression the troop carrying capability did sort of end up being secondary.

One thing you can say about the old Mi-24s... they might be big, but they're fast. Manueverability is a bit of question mark, I've heard it said that they aren't very agile but I've also heard that when the designer saw some of the maneuvers Soviet pilots in Afghanistan had learned to do, he basically said "I used to think I knew what my helicopter was capable of. Now I'm not so sure."

It seems the Russians did take issue with some of the original Mi-24 design choices in the end though. The upgraded Mi-24PNs got rid of the retractable landing gear in favour of fixed gear to save weight and went for shorter wings. An interesting move there, it apparently makes the main rotor more effective, but also means the wings themselves generate less lift. I wonder how that move effects the aircraft's range overall?

Incidentally, with the older model Hinds hovering for very long was discouraged. Guess it was a lot easier on the engines to fly forward given that the helicopter was really heavy but got considerable lift from it's wings. The new variants has less wing, but it also lighter. Don't know if that hover thing still applies very much with it.

As for the Ka-50, well, Kamov has built a lot of naval helicopters, and the fact that the Ka-50 has contra rotating rotors probably came to some degree from their experience there. Contra rotating rotors do have some advantages, but one of the big ones for shipboard use is that it allows the helicopter's length to be kept short. Interestingly enough, one of the other new Kamov designs, the Ka-60 (which is more of a light transport helicopter) has a more conventional layout.

BTW, one rather interesting feature of the Ka-50... it's has an ejection seat. And in case you're wondering how that's possible with rotors above the cockpit, well... it's not designed to return to base if the pilot punches out, so there's a set of explosive charges that are designed to blow off the rotor blades when the pilot punches out.

It probably effects weapon payload and autorotation, those short wings.

I hear in real life that crews normally didn't like running with infantry because it meant more bodies that could get injured by anti-air fire. Functionally, it was more a way for Mi-24's to pick up downed crews instead of relying on a second group of helos for backup.