Armed helicopter
Specialized armed helicopters fly from ships at sea, and are equipped for anti-submarine warfare or strikes with anti-ship missiles.
The French Army was one of the first military forces to modify and use helicopters in combat in a ground attack role during the Algerian War of 1954–62.
In 1955, French field commanders placed infantry machine gunners in the stretcher panniers of their Bell 47 (Sioux H-13) casualty evacuation helicopters.
The ad hoc gunships were used to reach FLN guerrilla positions on otherwise inaccessible mountain ridges and peaks, but were far too underpowered.
Some Piasecki H-21 helicopters were armed with fixed, forward-firing rockets and machine guns and a few even had racks for bombs, but the H-21 lacked the maneuverability and performance needed for offensive action.
Most H-21s in service were eventually fitted with a single door-mounted 12.7 mm machine gun or an MG151/20 20-mm cannon as defensive armament.
Under the leadership of Colonel Jay Vanderpool, the U.S. Army modified Sikorsky and other larger helicopters with fixed and flexible-mount machine guns, rockets, and cannon.
First the U.S. Army modified UH-1B 'Huey' helicopters, mounting machine guns and Folding Fin Aerial Rockets (FFAR) on struts parallel with the fuselage.
[7] Thirty of these bombs, containing eighty pounds of CS powder, could be carried by a CH-47, and were used to "saturate base camps, way stations, or infiltration routes to deny their use.
[12] The US Army also conducted a number of drops of large bombs using the CH-54 helicopter for the purposes of clearing landing zones.
[13] Tests conducted prior to the deployment of weapons and equipment for Operation Combat Trap led to discontinued use of the CH-54 and a switch to the C-130E(I) aircraft (later MC-130E).
The Army tested a dispenser system that could be used to drop smoke grenades, while the USMC went further and qualified the aircraft to carry the CBU-55/B Fuel Air Explosive.
[22] Helicopters have been used by the Iraqi Air Force during the Anbar campaign (2013–14) and the subsequent Northern Iraq offensive (June 2014).
If I were al-Maliki, and seeing Assad next door using the same tactics without a slap on the wrist and gaining ground as a result, it stands to reason he would say, 'Why the hell not?'".
[28] The Philippines also tested a single Sikorsky H-34 as an attack helicopter, armed with both rockets and bombs on locally fabricated racks.
