Lethal weapons

There is something alien about them that doesn't fit the gentle contours of the English landscape - too vicious, too brutal. Find one of these hovering, facing you from a few feet away, the rocket launchers under the stubby 'wings' pointing straight at you, and you would want to run, get out, get away.

Fortunately, this time it is us doing the chasing. The Apaches bank sharply right and swoop up over the North York Moors.

Our Army Gazelle, its doors removed to give better vision, follows. The pilot, Derek Hird, banks sharply. The wind rips in through the open cockpit, taking my breath away.

The chopper hangs almost sideways in the air, with just my harness straps preventing me plunging hundreds of feet to the fields below.

Then we leap forwards on the tail of the Apaches again, swooping low over the surface of the moors. Ravines open beneath us. A slope of heather burns, sending up a plume of thick grey smoke.

As the Apaches flit through it, the smoke could almost be coming from the ruins of a bunker destroyed by one of their laser-guided Hellfire missiles.

As we reach the other side of the moors, we give up the chase. The two dark destroying Apaches disappear somewhere in the direction of Scarborough on a training sortie. Our Gazelle heads back to base at RAF Dishforth.

The Agusta AH Apache MK1, to give it its full title, is the Army's new attack helicopter. A modified version of the Apache helicopters used by the Americans to such devastating effect in the last Gulf War, it is being brought in to replace the ageing Lynx tank-busting helicopters used by British troops in the Gulf.

The Army has bought 67 of these monsters at £25 million each, a total investment of more than £2 billion including training facilities. The first two operational squadrons, of eight Apaches each, will be based at RAF Dishworth, just outside Boroughbridge.

Twelve of the aircraft have already arrived, with another four to follow by the end of May and by October they should be combat-ready.

There is a neat timing to the Army's decision to show its new attack helicopters off in public for the first time now. A year ago today, British troops were preparing to go to war in the Gulf, their ageing Lynx helicopters a poor substitute for the Americans' Apaches. This could almost be a statement of intent: we're not going to be the poor relations next time, if there is a next time.

But is the Apache so much better than the Lynx? Apache pilot Capt Paul Bayley smiles thinly. "This is the Starship Enterprise compared to the Lynx's B52," he says. It's a comment which echoes the words of Col David Short, the commanding officer of 9 Regiment Army Air Corps based at Dishforth. He says the Apache is a "quantum leap" over the Lynx in terms of firepower.

Capt Bayley gives us a guided tour of an Apache crouched malignantly on the Tarmac in a hangar: and it quickly becomes apparent just why this is such a devastating fighting machine.

Each helicopter is essentially an airborne combat platform. It can carry 16 laser-guided Hellfire missiles - each of which can take out a tank, bunker or building with pinpoint precision - or 76 armour piercing rockets, or a combination of both.

The rockets can be fitted with a range of warheads, from standard armour-piercing warheads to anti-personnel warheads that spray the equivalent of hi-tech grapeshot, causing havoc among unprotected troops. It is also fitted with a 30mm cannon in the nose, used mainly for self-defence.

The ability to pick and mix the armament it carries depending on the nature of the mission it is flying is one of the Apache's great strengths, says the experts - making it hugely versatile.

It is only the beginning of what the Apache is capable of, however. As well as its weaponry, it has state-of-the-art surveillance and optical systems.

A Longbow fire control radar housed in the odd-looking dome above the rotors has a range of 8km and can detect up to 1,000 targets, display 250 of them and automatically offer 16 as priorities. "We can squirt this down the range, find what our targets are, and hit them, without ever having to see them," says Capt Bayley.

There is a target acquisition and designation system that incorporates an infra-red system capable of magnifying up to 36 times for night-fighting, and daytime optics with magnification of up to 127 times.

"At six miles, you can read a car number plate," says Capt Bayley. There is also a sophisticated pilot's night vision system enhanced by state-of-the art displays - making the Apache a devastating night-time weapon.

As if all that weren't enough, each helicopter is equipped with an integrated defensive aid system that can warn of incoming missiles and detect enemy radar and laser beams, offering early warning of attack. The system can even locate the source of incoming radar or laser beams.

"So if somebody is looking at us, we can look straight back," says Capt Bayley. "We're quick to the draw."

It all seems overwhelmingly state-of-the-art - and a little un-British. There is certainly no doubt that the Apache is a formidable battlefield weapon - one that, in the words of Col Short, can "dominate a battlefield". There is no known armour, not even a Russian T-80 tank, that a Hellfire missile can't take out, says Capt Bayley.

But for it to be effective, you have at least got to know what you are shooting at. As the dreadful bombing of Madrid last week revealed, the greatest threat to global peace and stability at the moment comes not from rogue states equipped with out-dated armies, but from terrorists who operate by stealth and secrecy. The Americans used Apaches in Afghanistan: but it didn't help them capture Osama bin Laden.

Does the Apache have any role in combating terrorism? No, admits Col Short. At least, it depends what you mean by terrorism. "If you define terrorist activity in an urban area, I would not see the Apache having a specific role to play there. If you define terrorism as what happened when the US went into Afghanistan, then oh, yes, very much so."

But there's the problem. The threat at the moment doesn't come from Afghanistan, or Iraq.

You can't swat a gnat with a machine gun. With the country's top policeman, Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir John Stevens, warning that a terrorist attack on Britain is inevitable, the Army may be hoping its fleet of formidable new attack helicopters will make us all sleep more securely in our beds.

But it won't, because terrorists don't stand up to be shot at. They sneak in, leave their bombs, and disappear like smoke. And they won't be at all bothered by the terrifying new Apache.

Updated: 12:13 Thursday, March 18, 2004