HA-55 Lamia

The HA-55 Lamia is a Zahavan all-weather, day-night, military tandem, two-seat. It is an attack helicopter with no intended secondary transport capability. It carries a single gun in an undernose barbette, plus external loads carried on pylons beneath stub wings.

Design
The HA-55 functions as an air-to-air and air-to-ground attack helicopter meant to fulfill the role of a true attack helicopter while the HG-60 serves as a heavy troop transport. The five-blade main rotor is mounted above the body midsection, short, wide, tapered, weapon-carrying wings are mounted to the rear of the body midsection. Two turboshaft engines in pods are mounted alongside the top of the fuselage with downturned exhausts. The fuselage is slender and tapers to the tail boom and nose. It features tandem, stepped-up cockpits, a cannon mounted beneath the belly, and a retractable tricycle tail-wheel type landing gear. Due to the energy-absorbing landing gear and seats the crew can survive a vertical fall of up to 12 m/s. The Mi-28 has a fully armoured cabin, including the windshield, which withstands 7.62 and 12.7 mm armor piercing bullets and 20 mm shell fragments.

It is equipped with two heavily armored cockpits, a windshield able to withstand 12.7–14.5 mm caliber bullets, in-nose electronics, and a narrow-X tail rotor (55 deg), with reduced noise characteristics. While not designed to carry personnel the HA-55 does have a small compartment capable of carrying three people or supplies. The purpose of which is to rescue downed airmen, or extract or deliver supplies to special operators.

The HA-55 features a helmet mounted display for the pilot with the targeting system following the direction of the pilot's eyes. The pilot designates targets for the navigator/weapons officer, who proceeds to fire the weapons required to fulfill that particular task. The integrated surveillance and fire control system has two optical channels providing wide and narrow fields of view, a narrow-field-of-view optical television channel, and laser rangefinder. The system can move within 110 degrees in azimuth and from +13 to −40 degrees in elevation. The helmet display, as well as the rest of the electronic combat system is day/night capable with infrared white hot/black hot capability.

Armament
The HA-55 is equipped with a chin-mounted turret with 30 mm automatic 2A42 autocannon. It has selective fire, and a dual-feed, which allows for a cyclic rate of fire between 200 and 800 rounds per minute. Its effective range varies from 1,500 meters for ground vehicles to 2,500 meters for airborne targets. Rounds from High Explosive Incendiary (HEI) to Armour-Piercing Discarding Sabot (APDS) can be used with stated penetration for the APDS round is 25 mm of RHA at 1,500 meters.

The standard load out for the HA-55 is a pair of missile racks holding up to 8 missiles each along with 2 rocket pods, carrying 20 CR-40 rockets or 5 CR-50 rockets

The HA-55 carries the AG92 missile, which has different variants for different tasks. The standard load out is to use the AG92A  variant is used against tanks fitted with Explosive Reactive Armor (ERA), its stated penetrative ability is 800 mm Rolled Homogeneous Armour (RHA). The AG92B variant is used against infantry, buildings, bunkers, and caves. While the AG92C variant is used against helicopters. All the variants have a range of 6 km. The AG92D is an improved version has a longer range (8 km) and better penetration (900 mm of RHA)

In the typical mission configuration the HA-55 carries either 40 AR-40 rockets or 10 AR-50 rockets. Both rockets are available in HEAT warheads or thermobaric warheads. The AR-40 has a shorter range and is typically unguided while the AR-50 has a longer range and can be laser guided.

The HA-55 can also carry the IR guided AA10 air-to-air missiles, the AG25 air-to-surface missiles as well as up to 500 kg aerial bombs.

Operators
Zahava