Verum
Junior Member
Can Pakistan afford such an expensive helicopter? Even "poor man's Apache", the Bell Viper costs about 30 million USD each and the real Apache costs about 40+. Judging from wikipedia and other publicly available info, WZ10 is probably on par in terms of performance and weight class as the new Viper.
Although WZ10 is produced in China, a country famous for cheap weapons, rising wages and inflations have made everything more expensive there. Plus since it was finalized within the last few years, it uses latest avionics, further adding to its overall cost. My personal conservative estimates for its cost would be about 20-25 million, then another 5 million on top for spare parts and maintenance. So each costs about 25 - 30 million.
Unlike fighter jets, which can be super effective with few sorties carrying precision weapons, attack helicopters have to be used en masse in order to be effective. So when Pakistan start buying them in bulk, they really have to buy a lot of them.
Pakistan currently has about 50 aging AH-1 Cobras, so they would need to buy at least equal numbers to replace current fleet then plus additional numbers to expand their capabilities.
Assuming only 50 will be purchased, that's 50 x 30 million, which is 1.5 billion USD.
Pakistan's annual defense budget is only about 7 billion. Although plausible, it is unlikely to be fielded in large numbers/
Although WZ10 is produced in China, a country famous for cheap weapons, rising wages and inflations have made everything more expensive there. Plus since it was finalized within the last few years, it uses latest avionics, further adding to its overall cost. My personal conservative estimates for its cost would be about 20-25 million, then another 5 million on top for spare parts and maintenance. So each costs about 25 - 30 million.
Unlike fighter jets, which can be super effective with few sorties carrying precision weapons, attack helicopters have to be used en masse in order to be effective. So when Pakistan start buying them in bulk, they really have to buy a lot of them.
Pakistan currently has about 50 aging AH-1 Cobras, so they would need to buy at least equal numbers to replace current fleet then plus additional numbers to expand their capabilities.
Assuming only 50 will be purchased, that's 50 x 30 million, which is 1.5 billion USD.
Pakistan's annual defense budget is only about 7 billion. Although plausible, it is unlikely to be fielded in large numbers/
