Right side front view medium shot at a Russian made Hind Mi-24 helicopter from the Army Test and Evaluation Center, Threat Support Activity, Las Vegas, Nevada, taxis back after providing simulated hostile threats to Search and Rescue operations, during Desert Rescue. Desert Rescue is a Joint Service Combat Search and Rescue (CSAR), exercise designed to fully integrate planning and execution of both immediate and dedicated missions

The name Las Vegas was given to the area in 1829 by a Mexican scout named Richard, a member of the Antonio Armijo trading party that was traveling to Los Angeles, and stopped for water there. At that time, several parts of the valley contained artesian wells surrounded by extensive green areas. Las Vegas means the meadows in Spanish. On May 15, 1905, Las Vegas officially was founded as a city, when 110 acres (45 ha), in what would later become downtown, were auctioned to ready buyers. On July 3, 1930, President Herbert Hoover signed the appropriation bill for the Boulder Dam later renamed the Hoover Dam. Work started and Las Vegas' population swelled to 25,000, with most of the newcomers, mostly males, working on building the dam. It created a market for large scale entertainment. A combination of local Las Vegas business owners, Mormon financiers, and Mafia crime lords helped develop the casinos and showgirl theaters to entertain the largely male dam construction workers.

It’s common to describe the Hind as a “flying tank,” but “flying infantry fighting vehicle” is more accurate. Inventor Mikhail Mil’s initial mock-up of the V-24, which would become the Mi-24, had a resemblance with the U.S. Army’s UH-1 Huey of the Vietnam era. A flying infantry fighting vehicle was a pretty radical concept—and at first, the Soviet Defense Ministry was reluctant to back the project. But Mil won over the ministry with key features: two flight crew in tandem under a “greenhouse” armored canopy and glass, accommodation for eight fully armed troops, a gun, plus rockets and guided missiles. The design of the Mi-24 is based on a conventional pod and boom, with a five-blade main rotor and three-blade tail rotor. It has retractable tricycle nose-wheel landing gear. Considerable attention was given to making the Mi-24 fast. The airframe was streamlined, and fitted with retractable tricycle undercarriage landing gear to reduce drag. The first mass-produced variants, Mi-24A and Mi-24B had significant shortcomings due to inadequate rockets. In 1973, the Shturm-V rockets were ready and the first example of the definitive Hind appeared. With its superior range, flight speed, and accuracy, the semi-automatic-guided Shturm allowed the Mi-24 to excel in the close air support role. The Mi-24V went into production in 1976, and around 1,400 examples of this and the export Mi-35 rolled off the assembly line in the decade that followed. Mi-24P was a Mi-24V with a rapid-firing twin-barrel 30-millimeter gun mounted on the starboard side of the forward fuselage instead of the four-barrel gun turret. The new version entered production in 1981 and also yielded the Mi-35P export equivalent. For customers with the money, Russian Helicopters offers the Mi-35M with night and all-weather capability and modern air-to-ground and air-to-air guided missiles. As a combination of armored gunship and troop transport, the Mi-24 has no direct NATO counterpart. Besides protecting helicopter troop assaults and supporting ground actions, the Mi-24 also protected convoys, using rockets with flechette warheads to drive off ambushes; performed strikes on predesignated targets; and engaged in "hunter-killer" sweeps. Hunter-killer Mi-24s operated at a minimum in pairs, but were more often in groups of four or eight, to provide mutual fire support.

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