Military Aircraft Videos

The Kamov Ka-50

The Kamov Ka-50 Black Shark (NATO reporting name: "Hokum A") is a single-seat Russian attack helicopter with the distinctive coaxial rotor system of the Kamov design bureau. It was designed in the 1980s and adopted for service in the Russian army in 1995. It is currently manufactured by the Progress company of Arseniev. Kamov also designed a two-seat variant, the Kamov Ka-52 Alligator (NATO reporting name: "Hokum B"). During the late-1990s, Israeli Air Industries developed a tandem-seat cockpit version with Kamov, the Kamov Ka-50-2 Erdogan (Turkish for "Born Warrior"), to compete against the AH-64 Apache and the AH-1 SuperCobra in Turkey's competition to select an attack helicopter. The Ka-50 is unique as an attack helicopter in that it is the world's first and only single seat attack helicopter, the first coaxial attack helicopter, and the first attack helicopter with zero-zero ejection seat developed by NPP Zvezda.