Work is in progress for increasing the range of weapons installed on Russia’s helicopter gunships Ka-52 Alligator, the press-service of the holding company Helicopters of Russia has told TASS.

"The Ka-52 helicopter, just like all of the holding’s products, have much room for upgrade and improvement. There are plans for increasing the range of its weapons and for unifying them with other types of attack helicopters of Russian manufacture," the company said without elaborating what missile systems it was referring to. 

Also, research is underway to equip the Ka-52 with "the newest radio-electronic equipment and the most advanced on-board defense complex," the Helicopters of Russia said.

The current model of Ka-52 is capable of using Vikhr-1 anti-tank missiles with a maximum range of ten kilometers. As the deputy chief of Russia’s General Staff, Lieutenant-General, Igor Makushev, said in the summer of 2017, Russia’s Mi-28N and Ka-52 successfully used Vikhr during the anti-terrorist operation in Syria.

According to open sources, Ka-52, alongside Mi-28N, Mi-35 and Mi-8AMTSh, will in the future be equipped with a new generation universal missile complex Germes-A having a range of up to 20 kilometers. It was declared that Germes-A would begin to be batch-produced in 2011-2012.