Dubai Airshow: Boeing launches export 'Little Bird'

Though Boeing have given presentations about the AH-6i at the United States Army’s Aviation Symposium and Exposition and at the Paris Air Show they chose to unveil the new variant of the Boeing H-6 (formerly McDonnell Douglas, formally Hughes) at Dubai.

The new helicopter offers AH-64 Apache capabilities, but is smaller in size and much lower in cost, and Boeing estimates that there is a market for some 300 of these helicopters, many of them in the Middle East.
Boeing’s Fred Jernigan, AH-6 International Capture Team Leader,  proudly boasts that: “We can deliver operationally useable aircraft in 21 months, period, no caveats,” and stressed that the company was also offering a diverse range of support and training packages

Launched with internal company-funding, the AH-6i uses the same C30R engine and transmission as the US Special Forces A/MH-6M Mission Enhanced Little Bird, and has the same 4,700-lb maximum take off weight, giving plenty of excess power and payload even with full internal fuel and four Hellfire missiles.
 

Boeing deny that the AH-6i is effectively an export version of the A/MH-6M, as Jernigan explained to Arabian Aerospace: “Boeing would not say so. The US Government does not like such comparisons to existing Special Forces equipment.”