Su-25 attack aircraft

relying on drones is asking for a disaster, especially in the growth of ECC and ECCM systems. Iran proved that Drones can be easily intercepted.

miketheterrible wrote:relying on drones is asking for a disaster, especially in the growth of ECC and ECCM systems.  Iran proved that Drones can be easily intercepted.

They will have su-57 and checkmate to attack such targets.

Honestly, there is no need to replace the Su-25.

As long as the new design is sensible armoured tank rather than fragile glass stealth shit, making a new design is a good idea.

The losses during the war on both side show they have no real future unless they use stand off weapons.

You can't look at their losses in a vacuum... what was their effect on the battlefield...

A drone might be disposable but if it can't support the troops and immediately gets shot down all the time then it is worse than useless.... and they are not cheap either.

With a Gefest & T upgrade an Su-25 dropping cheap dumb bombs from 7-8km altitude out of range of small arms fire and MANPADS would be interesting, but would it be as effective at finding targets and destroying them?

New optics and radar systems developed for attack helicopters and drones would be interesting... an Su-25 can certainly carry more fire power than any drone could deliver, and while no self defence system is perfect improvements are being developed all the time...

Drones with precision guided munitions will do a better job without risking pilots life.

That is not proven, drones operating at the same altitudes are even less situationally aware and are therefore more likely to get shot down.

Drones proved ineffective in Syria and Iran against decent air defences... there is no magic bullet fix to defeat air defences... even ones as damaged as the Ukrainian one is at the moment.

But I suspect this is the Su-25s last flight

With nothing to replace it of course it will continue.

For the Sturmovik role, Sturmovik drones are the future

I would want to see the operational shturmovik drone before I get rid of the Su-25.

So what kind of talk is this about su25 last fight

Needless to say the last conflict HATO fought where there were plenty of modern MANPADS around the place they chose not to fly below 8km altitude... in Kosovo.

Ka-52 also had self protection systems yet they got hit. Those systems aren't protecting 100%.

NO SYSTEMS ARE 100% PROTECTED.

The aircraft can inflict a lot of damages but it takes heavy loses too.

It is a war... not a game.

Drones can do most risky mission with better survivability and hunt AD systems.

Can they? Drones seem to be much easier to bring down than manned aircraft so far.

Then su-34 can launch kh-31 to take out radars and bigger system and bombing once no AD is left.

Su-25 can launch Kh-31 too. Are you not getting it? AD doesn't go away on a modern battlefield... how do you bomb away Igla?

But work on an unmanned version or a drone with the same flight profile and capabilities should begin IMHO.

Unmanned platforms have much shorter lives and are normally much more vulnerable to enemy fire because they normally have no armour at all.

They will have su-57 and checkmate to attack such targets.

Yeah, the A-10 and Su-25 have been replaced many times through history because they are too vulnerable... but each time, whether it is a modified version of an F-16 called the A-16, or it is a Yak-130 LIFT with standoff weapons they never actually work because they are too fragile and get shot down too easily, or the standoff distance means they can't find the more dangerous targets and deal with them.... costing the ground forces vehicles and men... but saving risking a pilot...

The fact is that you need a slow armoured aircraft that can provide direct fire and deal with targets on the ground operating within the envelopes of small arms fire, and despite CAS aircraft being declared obsolete or too vulnerable, they keep on using them.

Tanks have the same problem with ATGM and mines and all sorts of threats... but tanks are still used because they provide a service nothing else provides and does a job nothing else can quite match.

Tactics and new systems can reduce the chance of loss but nothing is 100% safe on a battlefield... not even a Maus at the time it was designed... destroy the tracks, set the engines on fire and break the guns and wait for the crew to bail to kill them.

Personally, I would prefer that they relaunch an upgraded version of the Su-25 with updated production technologies designed for the Su-57 so it'll be lighter, more durable and with better survivability against MANPADS. CAS aircraft aren't going anywhere for the foreseeable future, they're just too valuable on the frontlines.

The interesting thing is that this damage is near the engine exhausts, which suggests they were not Igla, Igla-1 or Igla-S missiles or Verba missiles... Soviet and Russian missiles since the 1980s would lead the heat source to hit the belly centre of the target rather than the engine nozzles... these are either old Strela missiles or if they are Stingers then they are elderly shit obsolete model stingers.

Whether they are getting brand new stuff or old cast offs they have plenty of MANPADS so they need designs with protected engines and perhaps even active IR jammers like heat lamps as well as DIRCMs... the more systems the better it will be able to cope because lets face it... the Orcs most likely are very well equipped with ATGMs and MANPADS and wont be deploying single systems at a time in a shoot and scoot type op... more likely they will have multiple operators near a likely intended target of Russian air power and they will likely launch all at once or within a few seconds so the targets have multiple inbound coming from different directions all at once... which is going to be a problem for any aircraft.

To be clear the west has wild weasel types and the F-18 growler designed especially for EW protection of other aircraft... other aircraft that have their own MAWS and self defence systems too... if the F-117 isn't safe then why would any helicopter or CAS aircraft be safe?

The... if it can't survive 100 hits then they might as well move around in trucks mentality is just stupid... everything is developed for a role and lots of other things are developed to counter those things from performing their role and the circle of counter counter measures never ends... sometimes armour is winning and sometimes it is the ATGM that is winning.

What we do know is when Serbia has MANPADS... likely in nothing like the numbers the Orcs have... the HATO forces choose to protect their own pilots by bombing from orbit where friend and foe can be hit... they can't be sure.  Well protecting a dozen pilots would lead to a death sentence to hundreds of thousands of troops on the ground because their air support is not working and it makes them terribly vulnerable to enemy attacks, not to mention the loss of vehicles as well... so the money you save by keeping your Su-25s and Ka-52s shiny and safe at home, will instead be spent on more ground forces getting killed trying to dislodge targets a 125mm tank shell might not deal with, but a 250kg bomb would.

There have been a range of advances in ceramic armour and crew protection in land based vehicles... applying that to a new aircraft design makes sense... and is an excellent opportunity for a design bureau to improve the current fleet with a new type.





Something like this?

Or maybe a turboprop?





With the engines above the wings... and separated...

Note the model with the jet engines has large thrust reversers for short field ops, and the lack of canard wings should improve visibility.

I think both would benefit from a decent integral gun with lots more ammo than the Su-25 carried, but it does not need to be massive... 30mm seems good enough, though an option for the 57mm grenade launcher gun would be interesting if they could make it work.

Maybe a screen on the engine intakes during burst fire with the APFSDS rounds to prevent the Sabots being ingested?

I must say I liked the wingtip airbrakes on the original Su-25 and think it could be incorporated into the flight control system to allow a yaw turn (normally a pedal turn) of rather more speed and angle than the tail surface could provide simply by deploying the airbrake on one side only momentarily to turn the nose to fire rockets or guns at a target...

Some sort of wing tip pod would also be useful for DIRCM lasers and sensors to provide more complete coverage of the aircraft in combat.

I am sure they have lots of ideas up their sleeves.

Will production be resumed?
SU-25M3?

lancelot wrote:Su-25 was built in Georgia. But there are so many in storage that Russia don't need to build more anytime soon.
They might do upgrades I guess. But it would be yet another aircraft with yet another engine type to maintain.

I think the engine is similar in performance to the RD-33 though.

Single seat variant of the Su-25 were made in Georgia. Dual seater was made at Ulan Ude plant in Russia.

There was talk quite a few years ago of returning to manufacturing more of these jets and turning the second seat into just a housing for more advanced electronics so thus turning a dual seater into a single seater without any need to change much at all regarding it.

The Su-25T and Su-25TM upgraded models were both based on the two seat version with the second cockpit replaced with extra avionics.

I rather suspect new avionics would be rather more compact and more capable and that they could have the avionics makers for the Mi-28NM and Ka-52M to work on some unified attack system package that perhaps connects the pilots and crew with ground forces commanders so they can better cooperate to find and engage targets.

At the time the Su-25TM design was considered too expensive but with experience in Syria and now Ukraine I am sure they will be able to work out what is needed and is useful and what is unnecessary.

They had the same problem with drones... what do you ask for before you have experience using them... a bit of combat experience and you get ideas of what will make things better or easier and you have a better ideas of the problems you need to solve which is of enormous help to weapon and systems designers developing the hardware and software.

Mig-31BM2 Super Irbis-E wrote:Will production be resumed?
SU-25M3?

No. It was built in Georgia. They will upgrade a part of their fleet and create a new one next.

The Su-25 was a very good design, but they need to ask themselves what its limitations are and if a new design with new avionics and sensors and systems is needed or if the old airframe is already good enough and they just need another upgrade.

Certainly a unified avionics package for finding ground targets could be created based on systems already created for Mi-28NM and Ka-52M attack helicopters... an enlarged more capable system could be applied to an Su-25 upgrade, and a simplified cheaper system installed on lighter drones and the Su-25 model could be fitted to MALE and HALE drones for observation and detection at long range of ground targets from medium to high altitudes, or at lower altitudes at extended standoff ranges.

Being able to share real time sensor information with commanders on the ground so as the aircraft approaches the ground commander sees the air picture in digital video and thermal imaging and also millimetre wave radar view of the area, he can note friendly troops and friendly positions and the locations of enemy forces that are a problem and perhaps find new enemy positions.

Combining that picture with the view from higher altitude drones should enable good cooperation with the ground commander being able to highlight things he wants taken care of while showing friendlies and neutrals that need to be kept out of the firing line.

This sort of communication should make the air support rather more effective and safer... by flying low and fast is a full time job so a twin seater aircraft would probably be better suited to such duties.



This was an old design put forward years ago...

and this:



Was another old design... note the two cockpits... the idea being that two separate noses meant one could have radar and one could have EO targeting systems without needing to carry external weapon pods.

One thing i have noted from this conflict is that the su-25's superior speed on the deck compared to the A-10 gives it a boost in survivability. It makes me wonder if you couldnt build a highly agile attacker capable of supersonic speeds at very low level. Problrm with this though is the massive IR heat signature.

Also realizing you cannot just throw drones at every damn problem, at least not yet. You need a man in the loop, and often a man in the loop at the scene of action. Drones have a lot of lag time and the situational awareness sucks. I dont attack aircraft are leaving thr battle space any time soon. Drones are a good acompaniment and force multuplier but they are certainly not a replacement.

As jet aircraft were introduced it was natural for the newest and the fastest to be used as the fighter/interceptor, while the slower previous generation jets tended to be used for ground attack... despite the best efforts of the aircraft makers who wanted their new planes to do everything and be bought in numbers to replace everything.

It was found that when they had MiG-15s and MiG-17s and MiG-19s and MiG-21s and Su-17s and MiG-27s to choose from the slower aircraft tended to perform better against ground targets because they could see them properly.

With faster aircraft by the time you spot something you have passed it before you can decide what to do.

That was about when Sukhoi put forward the Su-25 and Ilyusion put forward their Il-102 which is a bigger heavier aircraft rather more like the A-10 but still uniquely Russian... it has a tail gunner and bomb bay doors for bombs to be carried inside the wings.

MiG put forward a modification of a MiG-21 for the job, but the Su-25 was clearly the best... Yakovlev even suggested the Yak-38M and it was tested in a ground attack role in Afghanistan in the 1980s.

What they worked out very clearly is that supersonic speed is good for strike platforms that are passing through, but not for attack aircraft looking for targets... good for MiG-27s and Su-17s and Su-24s, but not for Su-25s.

Why not just have an unmanned su-25SM3, with DIRCM and without a cannon?

limb wrote:Why not just have an unmanned su-25SM3, with DIRCM and without a cannon?

Because for CAS with rockets and dumb bombs flying at manpad range from the enemy you better have a pilot in the plane that can use its eyes and brain.

Drones are overhyped. They are good for dumb missions like flying stfaight and launching some atgm at opportunity target but certainly not for CAS in a jamming environment.

Why without a cannon?

The concept behind drones is that they are smaller and lighter and cheaper than the thing they are replacing...

I would say a better idea would be a HALE or MALE that orbits at high to medium altitude with various optics and targeting pods operating a overview of low flying Su-25s to map out and locate enemy ground fire based on radar tracking shells and trajectories and IR for hot barrels and muzzle flashes to populate the live map of the area showing enemy positions and who is shooting at the aircraft... the Su-25s go in and take on the targets the ground troops called them in for while light strike aircraft like MiG-35s operate further back with data from the drones targeting air defences and other things firing on the aircraft with Kh-38 type missiles and ARMs where appropriate.

The key is not to expect any one piece of the puzzle to solve all the problems... use a bit of everything...

Drones are useful but their usefulness is very specific... for maritime patrol platforms where the missions are long and boring or long range strike missions deep in enemy territory where they essentially act like multi warhead cruise missiles, or recon for artillery forces to find targets and to watch while the attack takes place and to look to see if follow up attacks are needed.

Other roles include sneaky attacks from above at armour where their hatches are left open... drop a grenade inside and that tank is in serious serious trouble if the ammo goes off and it probably will.

Even a downwards firing SMG for troops in a trench...

But so far they are not good for fighters or light attack aircraft.

Cannons are bullshit. This isnt 1946. SAMs and AAMs can reach hundreds of km. Unguided Rockets are only useful if theres air superiority and the enemy lacks long range SAMs. Wether you like it or not, electronics are getting exponentially cheaper,and the future ina peer to peer conflict is in standoff cruise missiles and loitering munitions.

Isos wrote:

limb wrote:Why not just have an unmanned su-25SM3, with DIRCM and without a cannon?

Because for CAS with rockets and dumb bombs flying at manpad range from the enemy you better have a pilot in the plane that can use its eyes and brain.

Drones are overhyped. They are good for dumb missions like flying stfaight and launching some atgm at opportunity target but certainly not for CAS in a jamming environment.

manpads are evaded 99% of the time with automatic flares and DIRCMs. Modern Missiles are so fast and manuverable, that that the human brain cannot functionally make quick enough decisions and no aircraft has the G limit to outmanoeuver them.

Cannons are bullshit. This isnt 1946. SAMs and AAMs can reach hundreds of km. Unguided Rockets are only useful if theres air superiority and the enemy lacks long range SAMs. Wether you like it or not, electronics are getting exponentially cheaper,and the future ina peer to peer conflict is in standoff cruise missiles and loitering munitions.

Yeah, remember in the 1970s... aircraft cannon are obsolete and new planes wont carry cannon... well the only new fighters with no cannon are aircraft trying to save money because they are over budget.

Missiles are very capable but what do you use at close range against that ground target that was hidden till you got close... cannon and rocket are widely used in ground support... even in Afghanistan F-14s that were used for troop support because their F-18s and F-35s didn't have the flight range or endurance to operate in Afghanistan from their carriers, used their cannon to support ground troops.

A burst of cannon fire is often more effective than a rocket... being direct fire it is rather more accurate but delivers lots of explosives in separate parcels at a very high rate.

New ground based vehicles produced by Russia still use 30mm and even now use 57mm calibre guns, but you think they are bullshit... will everyone hang up their AKs and PKMs and just use RPGs?

In the Georgian conflict the pilots only complaint about the 30mm gun was that its rate of fire was too high... when they saw a line of trucks they fired short bursts from their 30mm gun but ended up firing more rounds than they wanted because of its high rate of fire.... in other words it was overkill... they were hitting the trucks with too many shells and a lower rate of fire was requested to be added as a feature of the gun.

One of the core problems of most drones is their lack of guns.

The lofting of air launched rockets in this conflict shows that attacking enemy positions or enemy forces retreating do not present single point targets for guided weapons to hit... and that area weapons like rockets or cannon bursts are very good for such targets... spreading fragments over a much wider area to do more damage than any single guided weapon could achieve unless it was an enormous one.

Frankly no one showed the ability to mass produce precision guided weapons meant to replace unguided weapons. I'm not talking about long range cruise missiles but stuff like gliding bombs or smaller missiles. Their stocks quickly disappear during wars.

A kh-29 is still a couple hundred of thousands of dollars. Western equivalent much more expensive.

They are good to take out sophisticated systems but you will still need cheaper dumb bombs and dumb artillery.

Guided weapons are great when you have something in the open you can see that you want to kill.

A light truck driving along a road, a machine gun position, an enemy ATGM team, but when the target is 200 men crossing an open field what the hell use is an ATGM? or a laser guided rocket that costs more than 20 unguided rockets?

This current offensive by the Ukrainian forces was a mass charge... precision weapons are no good for that... what you need is cheap and mass produced and able to be directed at the enemy positions in volleys.

Equally as found by the Su-25 pilots in Georgia... when enemy armour is lined up in columns on roads a single ATGM or 250kg bomb might take out a few but to do damage to the whole lot you need to fly down that road firing bursts from a cannon or rocket pod... most supply columns are not well protected with AD... the drivers are more interested in getting out of their trucks and running away than firing at you... and you are moving at 500-600km/h so you will blow past quickly enough anyway.

Experts have been claiming the end of the gun because of the missile for as long as they have been declaring the end of ships because of anti ship missiles and the end of aircraft because of anti aircraft missiles and the end of tanks because of anti tank missiles.

Most modern armoured vests have plates in them that will stop rifle calibre ammo but no one seems to be throwing away their rifles just yet.

(BTW those body armour kits rated for proper rifle calibre ammo it is usually an open hand sized plate that covers their chest and does nothing to protect their throats and heads and arms and legs and bellies and crotch areas or even their sides and rears... not really the protection claimed actually...)

So what happens when the amount of Su-25 airframes runs out due to wear and tear and combat losses? Restart production lines? Spend 2 decades developing and testing a replacement?