The Rostvertol joint stock company has shipped two new Mil Mi-35P attack helicopters to Peru early April 2011. According to a Rosoboronexport spokesperson, the contract for two brand-new Mi-35Ps and six Mi-171Sh multipurpose medium troop carriers from Ulan-Ude plant was signed in Lima on 22 July 2010. “This helicopter contract was lightning-fast indeed”, Rosoboronexport Director General Anatoly Isaikin commented on the deal at the time.

“The contract was signed only a month and a half after the Peruvian side had made its request”. The new helicopters are to be used on counternarcotics operations and in support of the Peruvian military fighting the rebels of the Sendero Luminoso extremist organisation. The deliveries under the contract are due for completion before year-end.

Russian military aircraft appeared in Peru as far back as the 1970s. The Latin American country acquired 12 Mi-25 combat helicopters (the export variant of the Mi-24D) from the Soviet Union in 1982. Seven machines more are said to have been bought from Nicaragua in 1992. According to Flight International, the Peruvian Air Force had operated 16 aircraft of the type by late last year.

The newly acquired Mi-35Ps differ from Peru’s Mi-25s in packing the formidable fixed gun mount with the 30-mm GSh-30K twin-barrel automatic gun instead of the swivelling 12.7-mm four-barrel machinegun and the sophisticated Shturm-V antitank guided missile (ATGM) system and the latest avionics as well. The Mi-35P is in production by Rostvertol concurrently with the modernised Mi-35M. The first order for Mi-35Ms was awarded by Venezuela five years ago. 10 helicopter of the type were delivered from 2006 to 2008. In October 2008, a contract was signed for 12 machines of the type for Brazil. The first three of them were delivered on December 2009 and three more followed last summer. Thus, a third Latin American nation gets sophisticated Rostvertol helicopters.

Mi-35P deliveries to Indonesia resumed last year after a seven-year lull. The first two machines were shipped in September 2003, and 2007 saw Russia and Indonesia make an intergovernmental agreement on a major loan to Indonesia for acquisition of various types of combat gear. A contract for three Mi-35P attack helicopters was signed as part of the agreement. They were assembled by Rostvertol last year and airlifted to Jakarta by an An-124 Ruslan on 23 September 2010.

The Republic of Myanmar became another buyer of Rostvertol’s Mi-35Ps last year. A deal for such machines was part of the December 2009 package of contracts for advanced Russian aircraft designed for Myanmar. Rostvertol shipped the first four Mi-35Ps to the customer in August last year, and the remaining four had been prepared for shipping by February this year.

The Mi-35M and Mi-35P shall remain an important part of Rostvertol’s production programme for the near future. According to Rostvertol Director General Boris Slyusar, the orderbook for aircraft of the family is full until 2015. The media report that the talks with potential customers from a dozen countries have resulted in contracts for 28 Mi-35Ms and 30 Mi-35Ps. The major of them, probably, is the contract for 24 Mi-35Ms awarded by Azerbaijan last autumn. Rostvertol is poised to kick off the assembly of these machines in the near future.