Soft credit = Basically free.
Also I don't think LCH is a great choice for Nigeria. Light attack helicopters will get chewed up in MANPAD rich environments.
Heavier attack helicopters like Mi-35s are better which can take 50-cal bullets at face and survive. The advantage of LCH is not in attacking and tanking damage but in service-ceilling and mountain warfare scenarios where other heavier helicopters fail miserably.
That's actually opposite for manpad threat. When it comes light vs heavy.
Most important thing terrorist don't have air defence which could have forced combat hellos to fly low. So even mi35 is safe there remember it had very high ir signature. In afganistan they were falling alot coz of stinger.
If aircrafts are flying at high altitude manpads can't track them most of, while engaging enemy they will be in the manpad cover. As of now no mi35 has bing shot down in Nigeria by manpad.
Now lch prachand is best choice if the threat perception is manpad.
The more heavier the hello is the more powerfull engines are used and the more exhaust is released which increases ir signatur making aircraft prone to manpads. In heavy hellos this is huge. Modern mi35 comes with ir suppressor which does reduce but isn't enough they have been targetted in Ukraine too.
While lch being the lightest will have least exhaust among this hellos reducing it's ir signature. If that wasn't enough they have put a powerfull IR suppressor which suppresses IR signature very significantly so much that beyond 1 km manpads can't lock on it.
That's huge
While heavy hellos like Apache do come with suppressors too but they will not have as much ir stealth lch has.
Kargil taught us well what we need.
While hellos like t129 don't have any ir suppressors as they were never originally designed (a129).
Hellos do posses maws to counter manpads
As soon as a missile launch is detected it tiggers flares release many time saving the aircraft.
However this doesnt guarantee In Ukraine many such hellos were shot down missile launch can't be detected all the time and even manpad will go for flare can't be guaranteed all the times.
lch prachand is the best attack helicopters in its category.
And serves well everywhere. It just lacks maws & radar warning receivers for now. Earlier they had put the same saab's suit which was also used in rudra but drdo came in and serial aircrafts will have them. Ig it should perform better than existing sensor on rudra.
Prachand won't be delivered without it to Nigeria so thats another layer of safety.
Here is the video of chief test pilot wing cmdr unni pillai listen from 49:40
' u have to be very close to get a lock under a km'
This is something which generally gets neglected.
View: https://youtu.be/0V-2ZoBC7GE?feature=shared