Latest news with #AH-1ZViper
Business Insider
16-06-2025
- Business
- Business Insider
Nigeria moves closer to acquiring 12 US-made AH-1Z viper attack helicopters
Nigeria is making steady progress toward acquiring 12 U.S.-made AH-1Z Viper attack helicopters in a strategic move to boost its air combat capabilities and strengthen national defense. Nigeria is advancing with plans to acquire 12 AH-1Z Viper attack helicopters from the United States. The acquisition aims to enhance Nigeria's air combat and defense capabilities amid growing security challenges. High-level discussions were held between Nigerian and U.S. officials to finalize the terms and timelines. This development follows a high-level visit to the United States by Air Marshal Hasan Bala Abubakar, Chief of the Air Staff, who led a Nigerian delegation to a Programme Management Review Meeting held in San Diego, California, from June 9 to 13, 2025. The meeting brought together senior U.S. government officials and representatives from Bell Textron, manufacturers of the helicopters, to assess progress and fine-tune the delivery timeline. The visit marked a critical step in the procurement process, offering Nigerian defense officials direct engagement with their U.S. counterparts, including the United States Marine Corps—operators of the AH-1Z platform. According to Air Marshal Abubakar, the meetings provided Nigeria with valuable insights into best practices for operating, sustaining, and supporting the AH-1Z, a platform known for its agility, precision strike capabilities, and battlefield survivability. During the engagement, Air Marshal Abubakar expressed his deep appreciation to the U.S. Government, emphasizing the value of its longstanding strategic partnership with Nigeria. ' We are deeply grateful to the United States Government for its enduring strategic partnership with Nigeria. 'The acquisition of the AH-1Z Viper helicopters will significantly enhance the Nigerian Air Force's combat effectiveness, operational efficiency, and mission readiness. ' The acquisition comes at a time when Nigeria is facing one of the most intense waves of terrorist violence in its history, with insurgent groups launching increasingly sophisticated attacks using advanced weaponry. Deal closed after three years after initial request This deal was first discussed in 2022, when Nigeria indicated interest in purchasing 12 AH-1Z Viper attack helicopters from the United States. After nearly three years of deliberation and diplomatic back-and-forth, the U.S. Department of Defense confirmed the sale, signaling a major milestone in Nigeria's military modernization efforts. Originally approved in April 2022, the full $997 million package includes engines, guided weapons, night vision systems, training, and logistics support as per Military Africa. The delay was largely due to U.S. concerns over human rights issues, which had stalled similar arms sales in the past. With regional security threats growing, the helicopters are expected to boost Nigeria's counterinsurgency operations and mark a new phase in U.S.-Nigeria military cooperation. The AH-1Z Viper attack helicopter The AH-1Z Viper —also known as the "Zulu Cobra" —is one of the most advanced attack helicopters in the world, developed by Bell Helicopter for the United States Marine Corps. It is an upgraded variant of the AH-1W Super Cobra and is designed for precision strike missions, close air support, and battlefield reconnaissance The platform features advanced avionics, weapons systems, and target acquisition technologies, making it one of the most capable attack helicopters in use today. The AH-1Z Viper offers a multi-mission platform that combines lethal firepower, high survivability, and advanced situational awareness—making it a valuable asset in modern asymmetrical and conventional warfare. The AH-1Z Viper features advanced targeting systems like FLIR and laser designation for precise day-and-night operations, along with radar and rangefinders for engaging ground and air threats. Its weapons include a 20mm rotary cannon, Hellfire missiles, Hydra rockets, Sidewinder missiles, and other munitions, making it a versatile and lethal combat platform. For Nigeria, it represents a significant leap in combat aviation capability, especially in counterinsurgency, anti-terrorism, and border security operations.
Yahoo
17-02-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
AH-1Z Attack Helicopter's New Long Range Missile Seen For The First Time
The U.S. Navy has released a picture of a U.S. Marine Corps AH-1Z Viper attack helicopter with a previously unseen long-range munition armament. The Marines are known to be in the process of developing at least one new missile, the Precision Attack Strike Missile (PASM), to dramatically extend the range at which AH-1Zs can engage targets on land and at sea. The Corps sees this as key to ensuring the relevance of the helicopters in a future major conflict, especially one in the Pacific against China. Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) recently shared the image of the AH-1Z as part of an announcement about 'the Marine Corps [having] successfully executed its first live employment test of a new Long Range Precision Fire (LRPF) capability' last November. 'The event was successfully executed at Yuma Proving Grounds (YPG) in Yuma, AZ where an AH-1Z conducted [a] single launch by way of a wireless application via Marine Air-Ground Tablet (MAGTAB),' according to NAVAIR's release. 'The November test at YPG exceeded the threshold requirements with regards to position, navigation, and timing.' Though NAVAIR did not specifically name the Corps' PASM program, which evolved from an effort known as Long-Range Attack Missile (LRAM), it seems likely that what has been shown now is the first look at a missile developed through these efforts. 'This project is an Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering (OUSD R&E) sponsored Defense Innovation Acceleration (DIA) project led by the XMA-ADT to evaluate cost-effective, long-range disparate effects in expeditionary and maritime environments,' according to the Navy release. XMA-ADT, which is housed within NAVAIR, has been directly involved in the LRAM/PASM work, as well as other advanced aviation projects. The 2025 Marine Aviation Plan, released earlier this month, also said that 'recently, PASM successfully completed its first launch from the AH-1Z.' It is also possible that the munitions seen in NAVAIR's recently released image are unrelated to LRAM/PASM. The AH-1Z in the picture NAVAIR put out is armed with two of the munitions loaded one each onto the outboard pylons of the helicopter's stub wings via standard U.S. military triple ejector racks (TER) with large orange-colored fairings at their front. The Viper also has test instrumentation pods on its wingtip pylons, as well as a pair of fuel tanks under its stub wings. The missiles themselves each have an x-shaped tail fin arrangement and pop-out wings under their bodies. Though NAVAIR's image is of lower quality, the munitions also look to have a design intended to reduce its radar signature, at least from the front, with a prominent orange-colored section on the lower half of the front of the nose. This might be an aperture for a seeker, but is also unclear whether the image may have been edited in some way for operational security reasons. NAVAIR also interestingly says that the test last year marked 'the first time a Marine Corps rotary-wing platform has employed a weapon system using a tablet-controlled device.' The aforementioned MAGTAB system is typically used by individual Marines on the ground or riding in aircraft for communications and other data-sharing purposes, including coordinating close air support, helping with route planning, and providing additional situational awareness. MAGTAB could be used to pass data from offboard sources to the AH-1Z about targets beyond the range its onboard sensors can 'see.' TWZ has previously pointed out that LRAM, at least, would require some kind of offboard cueing given the Viper's existing sensor capabilities. It is worth highlighting here that the U.S. military has also been using tablet-like devices to help with the rapid integration, in general, of new Western precision-guided munitions onto Ukraine's Soviet-era jets. TWZ has reached out to NAVAIR and the Marines for more information. The Marine Corps has previously said that LRAM was leveraging an existing, but unspecified U.S. Air Force missile design. The Air Force has three projects ongoing, at least that we know about, which are centered on the development of new, more compact, and lower-cost air-launched precision-guided munitions with ranges in the hundreds of nautical miles. A number of designs with x-shaped tail fins and pop-out wings have already emerged from those efforts, though none appear to be clearly in line with the missiles seen on the AH-1Z in NAVAIR's recently released picture. There is a possibility that any designs that the Marines explored through the LRAM effort, which is described as a Joint Capability Technology Demonstration (JCTD) and dates back at least to 2023, are different from what service is now pursuing for PASM. As mentioned earlier, the munitions seen on the AH-1Z in the recent image from NAVAIR could be unrelated to LRAM/PASM entirely. The Navy has its own stated interest in new air-launched munitions in a somewhat similar category to LRAM/PASM. Private industry has been taking notice of the overall growing demand in this space, as well. Just in January, General Atomics teased a previously unseen air-launched 'Strike Missile' concept, which you can read more about here. An unpowered gliding munition, such as the GBU-53/B Small Diameter Bomb II, also known StormBreaker, which also has pop-out wings, could be another pathway to longer-range strike capability for Marine AH-1Zs. Published estimates of StormBreaker's maximum range vary, from 45 miles to upwards of 60 miles at maximum release height and speed from a fixed-wing aircraft. The development of powered derivatives of existing glide munitions is another growing trend globally. Regardless, extending the range at which AH-1Zs can engage their targets is a clear imperative for the Marines, especially in the context of planning around a potential future high-end fight in the Pacific against China. A new munition with a range of around 100 to 150 nautical miles would substantially increase the kinetic reach of the Viper. The AGM-114 Hellfires and AGM-179 Joint Air-to-Ground Missiles (JAGM) the Vipers can carry now have maximum ranges under 10 miles. Hellfires and JAGMs with tripled and doubled ranges, respectively have been tested, but still fall far short of what the Marines are looking at for LRAM/PASM. 'I was a bit frustrated about the conversation they were having about what the next fight looks like. It was about a fight with a peer competitor and the distances we had over water with China and that H-1s were not going to be there,' Marine Col. Nathan Marvel told The War Zone in an interview back in 2023 laying out a case for the continued relevance of the AH-1Z, as well as the UH-1Y. 'I was like yes they are. Not only are we going to be there but we are going to be right beside the Marines in the field because that's what we do.' At that time, Col. Marvel was commander of Marine Aircraft Group 39 (MAG-39) based at Marine Corps Air Station Camp Pendleton in California. He subsequently became the head of the Rapid Capabilities Office and Science and Technology Directorate within the Marine Corps Warfighting Lab (MCWL). 'Coming back to that interoperability, it's multiple pathways and multiple waveforms. I don't think we say kill chains anymore, because it's not a linkage of nodes, It's a linkage of webs,' Marvel added in his 2023 interview. 'We may very well be an enabler where you're pushing data through us via voice and or data and we may very well be the end of that kill web or that kill chain enabler as well. We may tell someone where something is so they can go kill it or we maintain custody or someone may tell us where something is so we can go kill it like we have traditionally done. Interoperability is a huge focus for us.' 'We are going to be able to carry a Potpourri of weapons. It would not be unheard of to hang some exquisite fixed-wing fighter weapons on the wing-stub of a cobra and bring that to a fight,' he continued. 'It may be a loitering weapon or maybe an exquisite pod that does only certain things that we're used to seeing on fixed-wing aircraft and bring that to the fight and put that down at the rotor wing level to enable the battlespace commander and the maneuver element commander to do things that they may or may not have thought they could do before. So that's kind of where we are with capabilities buildup.' With our first look at an AH-1Z with a new longer-range munition capability now in hand, more details about LRAM/PASM and other work to extend the reach of the Viper may now begin to emerge. Contact the author: joe@
