| Rol | Description |
| air ambulance (medevac) | Rapid removal or transport of casualties, usually with ability to provide emergency trauma care during the flight and some means of communicating patient condition, sometimes including medical instrument telemetry to a hospital (distinct role from casevac). |
| airborne early warning | Search for surface or airborne threats, often in co-operation with a surface fleet, to whom target and tracking data is fed to a master situation room where data from many sources and sensors is integrated into a surface picture for senior commanders. |
| anti-submarine | Hunt, find and destroy a submarine threat, usually with a combination of active and passive acoustic and passive magnetic sensor suites and a combination of torpedo or depth charge deployment. |
| carrier on-board delivery | Airborne equivalent of a barge or lighter, delivering small supply items (eg mail) to a range of size of ships. Also used for ship to ship transfer of smaller items when operating in a task force. |
| casualty evacuation (casevac) | Rapid removal or transport of casualties from a battle zone, with or without ability to provide emergency trauma care during the flight (distinct role from air ambulance). |
| combat search and rescue (csar) | Search for, and rescue / extraction of downed aircrew under combat (as opposed to civilian emergency) conditions. |
| commercial freight | Provision of a scheduled or charter service, predminantly for moving items of freight in internal stowage or from special external points. Includes movement of one-off, outsize loads. |
| commercial passenger | Provision of a scheduled or charter service, predominantly for paying passengers and their baggage. Flights for pleasure or business, including oil/gas platform shift changes. |
| concept development | Airframes produced to explore novel approaches or techniques in rotary wing operations. Usually, but not exclusively restricted to a small number of prototype or pre-production airframes for proof of concept before embarking on a later production model, incorporating the lessons learned from this stage. |
| escort ship-based helicopter | They carry out marine defense, reconnaissance, target detection, rescue operations operating from small to mediums ships |
| fire and hazard control | Control of emergencies, such as fire outbreak, chemical or nuclear incidents. Usually involves collection, transport to remote or difficult to access sites and subsequent deposition of substances to control the incident. Typically this could be water from an underslung load dumped onto a fire, or neutralising or smothering agents to control a chemical spill. Includes cement drops on nuclear incidents. |
| heavy assault | Rapid insertion of a large number of armed troops, which may also include a large amount of equipment or vehicles for their support. |
| light assault | Rapid insertion of a small number of armed troops, which may also include a limited amount of equipemnt for their immediate support. |
| maritime patrol | Patrol duties at sea, covering resources (eg fisheries protection) and environmental (eg oil spill spotting) monitoring. Usually, but not exclusively operations are conducted from a ship or offshore platform. There is usually also a limited Medevac or SAR capability. |
| military transport | Planned or emergency supply, re-supply or movement of ammunition, equipment, vehicles or rations between locations for tactical or strategic purposes. |
| observation | Used as an observation platform, with or without additional sensors such as infra-red thermal imaging or high-intensity lights. Includes battlefield observation for coordination of artillery fire, armour and troop spotting, anti-tank operation coordination and forward air control. |
| search and rescue (sar) | Search for and rescue of civiliam or military personnel, not under combat conditions. Operations frequently conducted in poor weather or high sea states, where an emergency os more likely to have developed. |
| spraying (crop and pest) | Dispensing chemicals while airborne to promote growth (fertilizers), to control weeds or disease (crop dusting) or to reduce the impact of pests (pest control) on crops or forests or in support of public health programmes. |
| survey | Equipped with or without sensors and cameras to conduct survey operations, usually but not exclusively for geological, geochemical or geophysical work; environmental, oceanographic or geodetic survey, photogrammetry or ground truth establishment for remote sensing missions, cadastral or cartographic mapping. |
| tactical support | Typically, high intensity operations near the forward edge of a battle area. Includes use as a weapons platform for anti-tank and anti-surface vehicle targetting, often with good communications to a nearby oservation unit and re-supply of small numbers of troops. |
| trainer - advanced | Training airframe to enable aircrew to become proficient at advanced handling of a rotary wing platform, frequently for a specialised mission (eg SAR) or a specific configuration (eg multi-engine). |
| trainer - basic | Initial trainer to enable aircrew to become proficient at handling a rotary wing airframe on the ground, into all aspects of its performance envelope and the execution of emergency landings and routine reovery. |
| vip transport and communications | Transport of royalty or high ranking government or military officers, usually with additional protection, enhanced maintenance schedules and communciations equipment, and in some comfort (especially noise-insulation). |