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#Weaponry # For the "Little Antelope" light gunship produced in France in the 60s of the last century, I believe that for most of our domestic military fans, it is still relatively familiar, this is mainly because in the 80s of the last century, we specially imported this gunship from France, in a long period of time, the "Little Antelope" gunship frequently appeared in a variety of military publications related to Our country, its appearance and role caused wide interest from many military fans! Let's first take a look at the performance parameters of this classic lightweight martial arts:
"Little Antelope" light gunship
First of all, the "Little Antelope" is equipped with a "Asteyt" XIVM turboshaft machine in terms of power, which can provide 640KW of power, although the power is not very prominent, but considering the small fuselage of this helicopter, it is completely enough!
"Little Antelope"
"Little Antelope" gunship fuselage length is 9.53m, in the helicopter family, belongs to the standard small and cute type of helicopter, and its standard range is 710km, under this voyage, the main task of this gunship is air-to-ground strikes, its largest external load of bombs weighs about 700 kg, on this basis, there are two weapon mounting points, which can be used to mount 68mm or 70mm rocket pods, and the "Little Antelope" introduced into China that year The helicopter can also carry 4 Red Arrow-8 anti-tank missiles (under the premise of abandoning the external rocket pod)!
The Little Antelope launches missiles
And as a weapon delivery and launch platform, the gunship's fire control system is the use of all-weather sights, this equipment in the 70s of the last century can be said to be a relatively good equipment, navigation equipment is the use of wireless compass, in this case, can also achieve automatic driving, in terms of airborne radar, "Little Antelope" is equipped with AWARE-3 radar alarm receiver and laser guide, in short, when the French developed this helicopter, It can be said that it is very popular, exported to more than 40 countries and regions, the total number has exceeded more than 1200, which is enough to show how widely this helicopter is favored and liked!
A small antelope on the battlefield of the Middle East
And our country also successfully purchased this gunship from France in the 80s of the last century, and for decades, the "Little Antelope" gunship has been serving in our army, and has now slowly become a platform for training pilots, but there has always been a problem that has attracted the attention of our majority of military fans, that is, although we have introduced this helicopter for decades, so far, in our helicopter equipment platform, there has not been a "little antelope" The same or similar helicopter platform, so why didn't we imitate or directly reverse research and development after we bought this helicopter from France? This also does not seem to be in line with the consistent style of our military workers!
A small antelope transported to our country
Qinghui personally believes that there may be the following reasons:
First: the question of price.
In the 80s, the single price of the "Little Antelope" we bought from France was about 700,000 US dollars, and today it seems that this number and amount are not so huge, but we must know that it was the 80s of the last century, China's foreign exchange reserves were probably only about 10,000 in total, and in that period, if we were to spend a lot of money to buy a large number of such helicopter gunships from France, it would be very unrealistic!
The Little Antelope helicopter appeared in our country
Second: the problem of functionality.
As we said at the beginning, the "Little Antelope" armed helicopter is mainly responsible for the ground attack capability, especially for the ground armored units, but for our country at that time, the main armored engagement of the imaginary enemy is actually from the north, if it really develops into a fight with the other side's armored group, to be honest, this light armed helicopter gunship can not play too much power, because the other side's armored group army is too large, and the ability to prevent and control is also very strong. Even if our country uses the advantage of the number of armed helicopters to make up for it, the sacrifices we have paid are not something we can bear, because after all, the "Little Antelope" is a light armed helicopter, and its combat ability is OKAY against a certain combat unit, but if it deals with a powerful country dominated by armored group troops, it is really more than enough and insufficient.
The baby antelope has limited combat ability
Third: the problem of positioning.
For a land power like us, the space for light gunships to play is relatively limited, for us, from our own situation, what we need is definitely medium or heavy gunships, only such a model will have a larger and broader world in the future to play its combat capabilities, and it is clear that the "Little Antelope" light gunship does not meet this positioning.
Combining the above 3 points, we can very obviously draw a conclusion, that is, light gunships like "Little Antelope", for countries like us, should be more applied to the field of special operations, and in the future, on the more extensive and huge battlefield, this small armed helicopter does not have much room for survival and development, so the reason why we did not imitate, or even reverse study this gunship is understandable, everyone says?