Helicopter

First Seen: Half-Life 2, Chapter Three, Route Kanal
 * Health total: 5600
 * Weapon damage: Mounted pulse turret/Gauss cannon (5) Mines (30)
 * Entity:

Incredibly powerful, the hunter-chopper is a combat helicopter used, as the name implies, for search-and-destroy missions against weaker targets. Like the APC, this vehicle is a conventional Earth design (similar to a Mil Mi-24 Hind) co-opted by the Combine and modified using its own technologies. It utilizes a two-man crew of Overwatch soldiers; one pilot and one gunner. The hunter-chopper is armed with a powerful pulse turret on a fixed mount and has the ability to drop explosive timed mines. The gun has a wide spread and is used mainly on slow or stationary targets. Before firing the hunter-chopper emits an audible "whining" sound that can be used as an indication of when the gun is charging up. The hunter-chopper also has the ability to launch a barrage of "dumb" rockets, though this is seen only once in the game, towards the end of the Black Mesa East chapter. If the player remains in the base's scrapyard after the scanners and headcrab shells arrive, a hunter-chopper enters the area and barrages a sewer-hole opening with these rockets.

The spherical mines are used offensively - dropped directly in front of enemy vehicles and onto weaker structures. They detonate either upon contact with an enemy, or after a short timer counts down. The mines also float on water, allowing them to be used against boats and other water-craft. One hunter-chopper maneuver involves launching around fifty mines simultaneously during one high-speed bombard - effectively saturating an entire area. Hunter-choppers are among the fastest Combine units, able to keep pace with or outrun, almost any opponent. They are used mainly within the city and its outlying canals to search out and eliminate specific targets, especially those on foot. The hunter-choppers work both as lone attackers and as support units for other attack forces, depending on the mission. At locations further from the city, however, such as the coast or locations where there is a large number of enemies, the Combine will typically choose to use gunships instead for their greater strength and accuracy.

A group of City 17 escapees in the canals through unknown means managed to get hold of a hunter-chopper's pulse turret. When Gordon Freeman arrives at their camp, a Vortigaunt fits this gun onto his air boat. Gordon Freeman is then able to use it to take down the hunter-chopper that has been hunting him from the start of his mission.

The hunter-chopper is seen again in Half-Life 2: Lost Coast, but the chopper takes on the AI of a gunship, and they are also depicted in pre-release gameplay videos for Episode Two: a vehicle sequence features the hunter-chopper in pursuit of the player while driving the new vehicle along a railroad area, and is seen dropping the same spherical mines used in Half-Life 2's air boat sequence.