The Romanian Armed Forces were faced with a decision regarding heavy armoury and main battle tanks during the mid 1990's. Purchasing large numbers of new tanks was excluded, for several reasons such as the availability of funds, the lessons learned in the First Gulf War, the existance of attack helicopters, etc. Upgrading the existing tanks was an interesting option, however a large part of the thousands of tanks in service were T-54/T-55, obsolete types which weren't suited for such an operation.

The same lack of funding did not allow the purchase of AH-64 Apache helicopters either. At first, Romania pursued and even obtained the license to build 96 locally enhanced AH1RO Dracula attack helicopters, for a price of 1.4 billion dollars. However, the contract was later canceled by the authorities. In need for a modern attack helicopter, the Armed Forces turned towards the IAR-330 Puma, a capable medium-sized helicopter which was prone to upgrading.

SOCAT stands for Sistemul Optoelectronic de Cautare si Lupta Anti-tanc, or the Optoelectronic Search and Anti-tank Combat system. The SOCAT system has been fully developed and produced in Romania, some of its components surpassing the ones of a traditional AH-64A Apache. A decision was then taken to upgrade 24 IAR-330 Lima models with the SOCAT system, to produce a fleet of modern combat helicopters, which could also act as attack helicopters if the need would arrive.

The contract was signed in 2005, while the first prototype was finalized in 24 may 1998. Preseries production started in 2000, while most of the helicopters were only modernized after 2002, when enough funds were finally available.

The last IAR-330L Puma SOCAT, namely tail 28, was delivered today, 9 june 2005, from the IAR factory in Brasov, to the 90th Air Force Base located at Otopeni, near Bucharest. Two SOCAT squadrons are located here, since their transfer from the now-disbanded Titu-Boteni air base.

IAR-330L Puma SOCAT also performed combat operations abroad, under the EU Althea mission in Bosnia-Herzegovina between 2005 and 2006, being the first aircraft of the RoAF to perform such missions since World War II.