During the first ten weeks of operations, one SU-25 (FROGFOOT) was shot down and a further fourteen aircraft damaged, all of which were later returned to flying condition by engineering personnel. ..
A further SU-25 was shot down on 5 May. ..
Up to the beginning of March 2 x MI-8 (HIP) and 2 x MI-24 (HIND) were lost. On 24 May a third HIND was shot down over the village of Chechen Aul; all three crewmen were killed. Earlier on 30 April
another combat helicopter was brought down by heavy machine gun fire over the village of Gilyana; it managed to make a forced landing in Dagestan. A further HIND was shot down on 4 June over the village of Nozhay-Yurt some 70 kms southeast of Groznyy; both crewmen were killed.
On 12 June near Shatoy a HIP was brought down, presumably by an anti aircraft gun as it was delivering ammunition and food to the location of an earlier heliborne assault. The machine caught fire in the air, and began to disintegrate but the pilot managed to set it down and the crew survived. Thus in the six months of military operations ground forces aviation lost 4 x HIND and 3 x HIP.
..Chechen air defense weapons included ZU-23-2 mobile antiaircraft launchers mounted on KamAZ chassis and DShK machine guns mounted on Cherokee Jeeps and Toyota off-road vehicles. They also reportedly had Shilka ZSU-23/4 antiaircraft guns and Strela-3, Igla-1, and Stinger surface-to-air missile (SAM) systems. The Chechens also used RPG-7 conventional, portable antitank grenade launchers against low-flying aircraft and helicopters. ..helicopter crews ..often returning to home base with
bullet holes in the cockpit windshield. Statistics indicate that every 10th helicopter participating in the conflict was lost and every fourth was damaged.
Until March 2000 the air component lost two Frogfoots, one Fencer-E and 18 helicopters. In addition to this 24 aircraft had suffered combat damage. Only half of the helicopters were lost as a result of enemy fire. In June 2000, the number of helicopters lost counted up to 22, including 10 Hinds. In three years, from September 1999-2002, ASV would lose no fewer than 36 helicopters, which was an average of one per month. As aforementioned, this large number of rotary wing losses was only partly caused by enemy fire; other causes could be found in insufficient pilot training and lack of maintenance, due to the reduced funding of the MoD.
