It was designed in the 1980s and adopted for service in the Russian army in 1995. It is currently manufactured by the Progress company of Arseniev.
During the late-1990s, Kamov and Israeli Air Industries developed a tandem-seat cockpit version, the Kamov Ka-50-2 Erdogan (Turkish for "Born Warrior"), to compete in Turkey's attack helicopter competition. Kamov later designed another two-seat variant, the Kamov Ka-52 Alligator (NATO reporting name: "Hokum B").
The Ka-50 was designed to be small, fast, and agile to improve survivability and lethality. For minimal weight and size (thus maximal speed and agility) it was uniquely among gunships to be operated by a single pilot only.
Kamov concluded after thorough research of helicopter combat in Afghanistan and other war zones that the typical attack mission phases of low-level approach, pop-up target acquisition, and weapon launch don't simultaneously demand navigation, maneuvering, and weapons operation of the pilot; and thus with well-designed support automation a single pilot can indeed carry out the entire mission alone. However, it is still an unanswered question whether in practice the rank and file of Black Shark pilots would nevertheless suffer from excess fatigue from this combined workload.
Like other Kamov helicopters, it features Kamov's characteristic contra-rotating co-axial rotor system, which removes the need for the entire tail-rotor assembly and improves the aircraft's aerobatic qualities -- it can perform loops, rolls, and “the funnel†(circle-strafing) where the aircraft maintains a line-of-sight to target while flying circles of varying altitude, elevation, and airspeed around it. Using two rotors means that a smaller rotor with slower moving rotor tips can be used compared to a single rotor design.
... hells this would be one very deadly chopper with out the tail rotor ! closest ive seen displayed was Ka32 Helix , so different to handling than other western counterparts
