Chopper.

This is coolbert:

Contrary to what I think is popular opinion, the Soviet Union and subsequent Russian designers have always been big in the field of helicopter design.

While we may think of rotor aircraft, "Apocalypse Now", and the First Air Cavalry Division as being American concepts, the Soviets and later the Russians did do imaginative and innovative designs for helicopters from the start.

I have seen films of the first Soviet experimentation with rotary aircraft.

This apparatus of a helicopter, consisting of a motor, rotors, and a frame and controls, was suspended from a boom stretching out from the side of a ship moored over open water. A pair of cables hanging from the boom tethered the rotary apparatus so that the forward/backward and side-to-side motion was restricted, but not the up and down motion [well, this makes sense, doesn't it? You would want to see if the helicopter could be controlled in up and down motion, wouldn't you?].

Soviet helicopter development progressed at a continuous pace all during the Cold War, many designs being manufactured.

Soviet rotary wing aircraft tended to be larger and more robust than their American counterparts.

Dual or much larger engines tended to be the rule, allowing for greater size. Smaller, spindly, vulnerable, unarmored and underarmed helicopters the size of the American "Huey" were not favored.

The famous MI-24 "Hind" is such a craft. Carries five troops, a crew of two, one pilot and a gunner, has two engines, oversized multiple props, and standard multiple weapons systems with appropriate targeting electronics, and armored in addition.

The defector Suvorov contends that the Soviet Generals considered the helicopter to be the "flying tank". Could not only attack ground targets, as would any other fixed wing aircraft, but was able to hold ground targets, unlike a fixed wing aircraft. Take troops to the objective, land them, and then provide fire support for same, hovering, landing, taking off, flying around, and not constrained by being tied to a landing field as is a conventional fixed wing aircraft.

coolbert.