Turkey to Upgrade Bahrain's Cobra Attack Helicopters

Hakan · Jun 24, 2015

TAI to Upgrade Bahrains AH1 Cobras

The Turkish Aerospace Industries (TAI) has signed a $24 million deal with Bahrain to upgrade their AH1-P Cobra Attack helicopters. Bahrain has a total of 30 Cobras in its inventory. Roketsan is also in talks with Bahrain for the sale of Cirit missiles. TAI has upgraded Turkey's Cobra in the past which have also been successfully equipped with Cirit missiles.

In the past Bahrain has shown great interest in the Turkish-Italian T-129 Attack Helicopter,

Bahreyn’in Cobra’ları TAI’ye emanet
Bahraini air force details modernisation plans - IHS Jane's 360

Sulman Badshah · Jun 24, 2015

can after the upgrade these Cobra will be able to fire UMTAS?????

Hakan · Jun 25, 2015

Sulman Badshah said:
can after the upgrade these Cobra will be able to fire UMTAS?????

Yes

cabatli_53 · Jun 25, 2015

Sulman Badshah said:
can after the upgrade these Cobra will be able to fire UMTAS?????

To upgrade Bahraini attack helicopters, TAI signed agreement with Turkey's avionic/mission computer manufacturer institute, Aselsan, to integrate T129 Atak Mission Computer+Avionic solutions to Bahraini Cobras. This mission computer will allow Bahraini Cobras to use same missile payload of What T129 carries at present.

In additions, Bahrain is in talk with Roketsan to integrate state of art Cirit missiles to their Cobras initially. Cirit is an 2,75 inch cost effective, proven missile system, developed to destroy light armoured vehicles from longer ranges. It is the first of its class in World. By the way, Cirit successfully engaged a moving target travelling at 60 km/h while the platform it was fired from was moving at 220 km/h (120 knots).

Cockpit of Bahraini Cobras will look like that AH-1S upgraded by Aselsan/TAI.

First costumer of this missile is United Arab Emirate which signed agreement for 10,000 missiles. In recent months, Roketsan signed agreement with MBDA Deutschland to integrate Cirit for German Tiger copters. A similar agreement is also signed with Eurocopter to integarte Cirit for EC-635 copters.

Cirit

black-hawk_101 · Jun 26, 2015

Why not Bahrain buy some more from Turkey, Jordan, Philipines and Pakistan; and as spares from Israel, Spain and US. As if they have it in numbers like 100+ they can be used better as a Policing one too.