China looking at Russian Helicopters KA52 Alligator for shipborne use

[chopper2004]

Interesting turn here considering around 2 decades ago, Russian Helicopters mused about China being a customer for the Alligator and now PlAN needing them for their amphibious assault carrier.

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/mili...k-heavy-attack

[PPRuNeUser0211]

Originally Posted by chopper2004

Interesting turn here considering around 2 decades ago, Russian Helicopters mused about China being a customer for the Alligator and now PlAN needing them for their amphibious assault carrier.

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/mili...k-heavy-attack

It's a duty rumour at present, certainly. 2 Chinese media outlets visited Kamov to look at the cab. The Chinese have form for buying high end aircraft from Russia (FW obviously, but recently they received some SF-Modded HIPs as well). None of their main attack aviation is properly marinised to my knowledge. Z-9WZ (armed Dauphin) has some commonality with Z-9C/D, but is a legacy platform. Z-19 is a skinny tandem-modded Dauphin with pylons, but developed for PLA use and unlikely to be marinised. Z-10 stems from some design work Kamov did for the Chinese, and looks fairly swept up, though under-powered. Again unlikely to be marinised.

Both Z-19 and Z-10 have been pictured in Chinese media supporting amphib exercises, including deck landings, and there's not even flot gear fitted, so it would make sense to acquire a properly marinised cab, given they're building amphib assault ships and carriers like they're going out of fashion (likely to have 6-8 amphib+carriers by end of decade).

KA-52K (marinised variant) has already been exported to Egypt, so the Russians are clearly willing to sell, though whether they'd sell the modernised variant (KA-52M) I'd suggest is questionable.