The helicopter you see above is known as “Peten” in the Israel Air Force (translates to “Cobra”), and it is a Boeing AH-64A attack helicopter that’s been used by the country’s army since the 1990s.
Typically speaking, the country uses the chopper to patrol the skies over Gaza and launch air strikes against insurgents. For the latter reason, it needs to be equipped with some pretty intelligent countermeasure technologies, in order to protect it from MANPADS and IR-guided surface-to-air missiles.
This leads us to the image above, which was captured on December 26th by Nir Ben-Yosef. While it might look like the Peten was struck by a missile and is on its way down, it’s actually salvoing flares in the dark during a demonstration flight.
The reason why — flares are used by planes and helicopters to mislead surface-to-air and air-to-air missile’s heat-seeking targeting systems. The pilot is simply demonstrating what the chopper looks like when this technology is engaged.
Story via theaviationist.com
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