Aviation Archive No 80 2025 Attack Helicopters

Gunships, tank-busters, armed scouts: since the 1960s, the rotorcraft has revolutionised close air support and battlefield reconnaissance. 

The first gunships were transport or utility helicopters fitted with various, often improvised, forward-facing weapons with rudimentary sights. They have evolved into sophisticated machines equipped with heavy armament, which is increasingly precision guided, and suites of sensors to fly and find their targets in night or bad weather.

Attack helicopters came into their own in Vietnam and Afghanistan, where they were feared by insurgents –- at least until they obtained portable surface-to-air missiles. Proving more effective than light fixed-wing aircraft in many roles, helicopter gunships ruled the airspace above the battlefield but have increasingly been challenged by turboprop attack aircraft and, more recently, by drones, which in Ukraine have become the biggest killers of armoured vehicles and have proved a threat to helicopters themselves.

Aviation Archive Issue 80 explores the fascinating history of the attack helicopter from the African bush wars to the steppes of Ukraine with the help of historic and contemporary photographs, original profile artwork and detailed cutaway drawings.