Ka-52 Alligator

Record

Conflict relevance

This is the catalogue's single record for this system. It is relevant to the module below; each module's Force Atlas shows how it is used there.

Operators

Battlefield role

Anti-armour standoff strike with long-range guided missiles, and escort for air-assault operations — the rotary-wing system with the clearest documented battlefield effect on the Russian side.

Strengths

Coaxial rotors give agility and power at low level; heavy guided-missile load, extended by the LMUR missile to ranges beyond most front-line air defence; proved brutally effective against armour in the open in 2023.

Limitations

Heavy documented attrition — dozens lost, concentrated in 2022 when flown aggressively at low level; vulnerable on the ground, as the October 2023 ATACMS strike on Berdyansk airfield demonstrated; expensive airframes and crews that replace slowly.

Campaign relevance

Derived: a participant organisation in these campaigns carries a typed equipment association with this system. That is not the same as documented use of the system in the campaign itself.

• The strategic campaign against Ukraine's electricity system Since October 2022

  via Aerospace Forces (VKS) (Documented, high confidence)

Visual identification

Coaxial contra-rotating rotors with no tail rotor; side-by-side two-seat cockpit — both unique among attack helicopters; stub wings with weapons pylons and a flattened twin-fin tail.

Documented conflict use

Escorted the Hostomel air assault in February 2022; documented throughout the war, most consequentially as the standoff anti-armour screen against the 2023 southern counteroffensive. Losses are extensively documented by open-source trackers, including several destroyed on the ground at Berdyansk.

Branch & service operators

• Aerospace Forces (VKS) Documented