Helicopter



"If the wings are traveling faster than the fuselage, it's probably a helicopter -- and therefore, unsafe."

- Unknown

A Helicopter is a variety of aircraft. Helicopters are lifted and propelled by one or more horizontal rotors, with each rotor consisting of one or more rotor blades. Unlike most fixed wing aircraft, helicopters do not need to be moving forward to remain airborne.

In Call of Duty
Helicopters are only present in Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare and Modern Warfare 2. Helicopters including the Mi-24, Mi-28, Mi-8,AH-1 SuperCobra, MH-53, UH-60 Black Hawk, MH-6 Little Bird and CH-46 Sea Knight are featured. In the single-player campaign, the player interacts with friendly helicopters by using them for transportation and fire support. Enemy helicopters are often avoided, although the player may engage them.

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
In multiplayer, an attack helicopter (the AH-1 SuperCobra for SAS/Marines and the Mi-24 for OpFor/Spetsnaz) can be summoned to provide fire support for your team when a 7-kill streak. Once summoned, the helicopter will follow a pattern circling around the map once, looping back to where it started, and then will leave. Helicopters will search for and kill any enemies with machine guns and rarely rockets (it is possible, albeit rare, to be team killed by a friendly helicopter in hardcore game modes).

Helicopter support will not stack; a player who has achieved a 7-kill streak will have to wait until the current helicopter leaves or is shot down to call in a new helicopter. Lower tier air support (i.e. UAV and airstrike) can be activated at same time a helicopter is active. The helicopter will leave after approximately 2 minutes at most, but can leave earlier.

Helicopters have 1100 hit points. They will take 30% damage from bullets until they have lost 550 hit points, where they will take full damage from bullets. Helicopters will also use evasive maneuvers after losing 550 hit points, and will attack and move faster during evasive maneuvers. Shooting down a helicopter is an option, with the RPG and Light Machine Guns being the most effective weapons. One hit from an RPG rocket will deal 1000 damage, 91% of a helicopter's hit points. A player with an RPG and the Sonic Boom perk (which increases the damage of the RPG by 25%) will deal 1250 damage to a helicopter with one hit from an RPG rocket, thus destroying it. Mounted M249 machine gun turrets are also effective, often more so than RPGs, as it can easily take down a helicopter in around 5 seconds. Players should remember that although a helicopter will never open fire without line of sight, it will often continue firing at a player who has taken cover, and its bullets penetrate most surfaces.

While the AH-1 SuperCobra and the Mi-24 Hind helicopters are identical in performance, the Mi-24 is much larger than the AH-1, making it a MUCH easier target for RPGs, while it is harder to hit the AH-1 unless its very close to the RPG user.

A helicopter will assess certain factors when deciding which players to engage (factors not listed in any particular order):


 * Distance between the enemy and the helicopter; helicopters will attack closer targets first
 * Whether the player has attacked the helicopter before; helicopters prefer to attack the player who most recently attacked them
 * The weapon an enemy player is using; a helicopter is more likely to attack an enemy player with a LMG-Sniper Rifle-Assault Rifle-SMG-Shotgun. Contrary to popular belief, carrying RPGs does not increase the chance of a helicopter shooting you.
 * Player stats for the current game, such as kill-to-death ratio; a helicopter will likely attack an enemy player with a high kill-to-death ratio

The kill-to-death ratio and the number of points seem to be the most important factors in deciding who will be attacked.

In multiplayer, if shot down (either with an RPG or automatic weapon), the helicopter's tail will explode, causing the chopper to spin out of control, eventually exploding just outside the map, always in the same place, regardless of where it was destroyed.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 features five helicopter related kill streaks:

Care Package
When the player calls in a Care Package, it will be delivered by an MH-6 Little Bird helicopter. This Helicopter can be destroyed, but yields no points. Destroying the helicopter is hard because it moves very fast.

Sentry Gun
The Sentry Gun is also delivered by an MH-6 Little Bird helicopter.

Attack Helicopter
The Attack Helicopter returns as a 7-kill streak reward and is identical to its Call of Duty 4 counterpart in appearance. It is considered more effective than it's Call of Duty 4 counter-part, but with the addition of the Harrier Strike, it is far less used. It appears to fire FMJ rounds, as evidenced by the sound it makes when the bullets impact. The Attack Helicopter's main weakness is its lack of flares. A single RPG-7, Javelin, or Stinger missile (or two AT4 missiles) will bring it down, as well as a single Predator Missile. It will also linger around for a little longer than its Call of Duty 4 counterpart. TF141, Rangers, and SEAls use the AH1ZnSuper Cobra, Militia, Opfor, and Spetsnaz use the MI-28 Hind.

Pave Low
The Pave Low is a more heavily armored helicopter sporting two machine guns and unlocked after nine kills. It has one flare for breaking missile lock, and appears to use FMJ ammunition. It takes more gunfire than the Attack Helicopter to destroy, but when the flare has been spent, it only needs one Stinger/Javelin shot.

Chopper Gunner
The Chopper Gunner is unlocked at eleven kills and is user controlled via a laptop. Rangers, Navy SEALs and Task force 141 receive an AH-64 Apache; Spetsnaz, OpFor and Militia receive an Mi-28 Havoc. The player is vulnerable to attack, but can prioritize his targets and even spot out enemies normally hidden by Cold-blooded (though they won't be marked with a red box like all other players). The player cannot control any other part of the helicopter, though the Pilot-AI will usually maneuver into a position to give the player a clear shot and will even target those out in the open. The Chopper Gunner is often defaulted to as the best in-game vehicle killstreak. It has one flare for diverting locked-on missiles, but only needs one Stinger/Javelin missile to take it down after the flare has been used.

Trivia

 * In Call of Duty 4, a single player level where the player was to pilot an AH-1 SuperCobra was cut from the final version of the game. In many magazine previews, this mission is mentioned.
 * On multiplayer, if you look closely at some of the helicopters, they have no pilots.
 * Although extremely rare, it is possible to get killed by the helicopter's rocket when it fires, but usually it fires its rocket out of the map. It is also possible for your own helicopter to machine gun you. Go on split screen and stand in front or behind an enemy, and sometimes the bullets will go through and kill you (it works best with minuscule health)
 * Helicopters eject shell casings when they fire from their main gun.
 * Helicopters always crash in the same place. This can be seen with spectating easily. Even if the helicopter is on the other side of the map it will still fly out of control into the same place sometimes crossing large maps and going through solid objects.
 * The helicopters in Modern Warfare 2 do not attack players based on their choice of weapons. This is because the classes have been rearranged and shotguns (considered the least threatening in COD4) are now a secondary weapon.
 * When TF 141, Navy SEALS and Rangers call in an attack helicopter, an AH-1 Cobra appears. The Spetsnaz, Militia and OpFor will call in a Mi-24 'Hind'.


 * To tell the four different types of helicopters apart in Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2, the Little Bird has a Care Package symbol under it, the Attack Helicopter has the normal symbol, the Pavelow picture has two added machine guns to the Attack Helicopter picture, and the Chopper Gunner has a triangle in the middle to represent the player.

Glitches

 * Sometimes, on the map Bloc, when a chopper is shot down, it will start to spin through the buildings and then explode. It is probable that helicopters were never meant to interact with solid objects.
 * Sometimes, on the map District, the player can melee the helicopter. This is easily done when it flies really low near the market place.
 * When an enemy helicopter is shot down and spinning, shoot it with any machine gun with Cold-Blooded on and you will keep unlocking the Cold-Blooded Pro challenges. This is the easiest and fastest way to do these challenges.