Eruere Ashwal

Eruere Ashwal
An Ashwal armed 70mm rockets
Role	Light utility helicopter
National origin	Charnea
Manufacturer	Eruere Enterprises
Introduction	1981
Status	In service
Primary user	Charnean Army
Produced	1981–present
Number built	621

The Eruere Ashwal (Tamashek: ⴰⵛⵡⴰⵍ, tr. "Locust") is a light multipurpose single-engine military helicopter manufactured by Eruere Enterprises in Ekelhoc, Charnea. It was the first indigenous helicopter to be designed and produced in Charnea at the time of its introduction in 1981. The Charnean defense industry, under pressure from sanctions and an arms embargo, bankrolled the development in an effort to establish domestic production of helicopters to resupply the Charnean Army. Despite the age of the design, it remains in military service with no plans to replace it thanks in large part to its low unit cost, simplicity of maintenance, and the relative ease of upgrading the modular components of the airframe. The Ashwal is the most numerous aircraft of the Charnean Army Air Corps by a wide margin.

Development

The race to develop a helicopter which could be produced domestically inside of Charnea began in 1977 with the imposition of several arms embargoes on the country in response to its escalation of the ongoing Ninvite War. Onekawan businessman Tonga Eruere saw the potential to seize control of the now wide open Charnean aircraft market and established Eruere Enterprises with the goal of filling the Charnean military's demand for aircraft. Helicopters were in particularly high demand by the military as they were both sorely needed for the increasing number of airmobile counterinsurgency formations being deployed in the ongoing conflict while also being some of the most vulnerable pieces of equipment on the battlefield, being lost to enemy fire more frequently than any other type of vehicle. Tonga Eruere hired a team of engineers to come up with a design proposal for a craft which would be capable enough to meet the needs of the Charnean military and yet also simple and cheap enough to manufacture inside of Charnea in order to avoid the sanctions and arms embargoes.

Eruere's engineers came up with a number of techniques to simplify the manufacturing process for the proposed design, such as the reduction of the powerplant to just a single simplified engine and the use of a rolled sheet construction technique for the fuselage which had been already been used by some Charnean manufacturing plants, namely those of the Akayon Corporation. In order to simple enough to manufacture domestically and cheap enough for the Charnean military to afford in significant numbers, the decision was made early in the process to create a relatively small and lightweight helicopter which would have limited passenger capacity. The design was reviewed by Charnean military procurement officials, who issued their preliminary approval awaiting Tonga Eruere's efforts to finish building and equipping a production plant capable of actually manufacturing the proposed design. This was completed in 1981, 4 years after Tonga Eruere started the project, delivering three Ashwal helicopters to the Army that year although production would soon accelerate to a rate of 3 per month by 1984 at the height of the Ninvite War.

Design

The Ashwal is a single-design powered by Eruere's proprietary Turbomech 1A powerplant turning a three-bladed rotor. This propulsion system grants the helicopter a service ceiling over 5,000 meters, exceptionally high for a craft of this type. Composite materials are used in both the rotors and the aircraft's main body in order to reduce the manufacturing cost as well as to cut down on corrosion and thus maintenance costs for the airframes over time. The fuselage was also designed with some limited noise dampening features in order to meet the military's request for a low-noise cabin so that troops onboard could be briefed on their mission in-flight.

Weapon mounting points on either side of the fuselage allow for various configurations of armaments to be attached to the base helicopter type, including 70mm unguided rocket launchers, air-to-ground ATGMs, 12.7mm machineguns and 20mm autocannons. This would also allow military aircraft to be easily disarmed and potentially resold to the civilian market, a feature that Tonga Eruere insisted upon as he anticipated a new market for for civilianized version of the Ashwal to emerge after the war. Such civilianized airframes could then be re-acquired by the military in an emergency and easily re-armed and pressed into service.

The Ashwal largely lacks built in defensive features, being notably unarmored and therefore vulnerable even to small arms fire. Armor was omitted in order to make the design easier and cheaper to manufacture as well as to save weight, keeping the aircraft light and thereby improving its range and speed. However, later versions of the Ashwal would be equipped with more redundant onboard systems in order to increase the survivability of the aircraft when being damaged by enemy fire or simply suffering equipment failure. The helicopter does, however, feature two anti-missile countermeasures intended to help defend against guided MANPADS missiles. These consist of a laser warning receiver system which can alert the pilot when the aircraft is being targeted by the laser rangefinder or guidance system, as well as a flare launcher to confuse infrared guidance systems.

Service History

The Ashwal has been used extensively by the Air Corps since its introduction to the present day. It saw the most extensive use during the Ninvite War, in which the helicopter proved instrumental in containing insurgent forces by allowing the Army to quickly deploy light infantry teams to remote regions of the eastern desert practically at will. The Ashwal's role as established by its use in the Ninvite War is as a hybrid transport and light attack aircraft. During that conflict, it came to be known as the "aerial infantry fighting vehicle" due to its remarkably similar battlefield role to ground-based IFVs like the A84 Inabarom, deploying troops to the battlefield and then providing fire support to dismounted infantry as needed. It would also see extensive use during the 2004 uprising in eastern Charnea as well as the Fahrani Civil War.

The lack of armor protection of the aircraft became an obvious fact during its use in combat, which regularly saw ICA pilots flying Ashwals much closer to the enemy than was ever anticipated by Tonga Eruere or indeed the Charnean Army's own command personnel who approved the design. This led to frequent incidents of helicopters being severely damaged by fire from heavy machineguns and even lower caliber small arms, leaving to dozens of airframes being destroyed, either killing or stranding their crews and passengers in the desert. Experiments with up-armoring the Ashwal ultimately ended in failure as the added weight unbalanced the aircraft and made its sluggish, while also as much as halving its operational range. However, post-war upgrades of the Ashwal would included redundant systems to allow the airframe to stay functional when taking fire, which could result in an Ashwal which might have otherwise been destroyed to instead stay in the air and possibly retreat back to base.

As intended, the Ashwal would enter service in the civilian sector with numerous helicopter airlines and municipal firefighting and rescue units. The Charnean Army has established provisions to seize these airframes with a pre-established compensation scheme in place to then re-arm them and mobilize them back into the Air Corps. This system not only enables the ICA to mobilize a reserve force of helicopters in an emergency, but also spares the military from paying for the maintenance of the civilianized airframes during peacetime.

Specifications

General characteristics

• Crew: 2
• Capacity: 4 passengers
• Length: 10.93 m (35 ft 10 in) (fuselage length)
• Height: 3.34 m (10 ft 11 in)
• Empty weight: 1,220 kg (2,690 lb)
• Max takeoff weight: 2,250 kg (4,960 lb)
• Fuel capacity: 540 L
• Powerplant: 1 × Turbomech 1A turboshaft, 632 kW (847 shp)
• Main rotor diameter: 10.69 m (35 ft 1 in)
• Main rotor area: 89.75 m² (966.1 sq ft)

Performance

• Maximum speed: 246 km/h (153 mph; 133 kn) (max cruise)
• Never exceed speed: 287 km/h (178 mph; 155 kn)
• Range: 648 km (403 mi; 350 nmi)
• Service ceiling: 5,280 m (17,320 ft)
• Rate of climb: 10.30 m/s (2,028 ft/min)

Armament
Able to equip 2 of:

• 20 mm autocanon
• 12.7 mm machine gun pod
• 7 x 70mm unguided rocket launcher
• TEL-6 Esayn anti-tank missiles