Su-34 Tactical Bomber: News #2

24km... that proves my point. It was launched 40km away from the front.

Israeli F-35s don't enter Syrian airspace to launch their attacks and they are several times the price of the Su-34 and are supposed to be stealthy.

How many FAB-3000s do you think an F-35 could carry?

Kh-31 isn't even used anymore.

Kh-31 is widely and heavily used.

It is a very popular and effective missile.

Kh-31 isn't even used anymore. Kh-35 is used against big radars and AD system are taken out by lancet/iskander. They go for coordinates instead of locking on radar waves. Finding is done by satelittes or drones. Their Elint/EW sucks big time.

Their ARMs have always used coordinates rather than radar waves to attack targets... that is why the Kh-58 (AS-11) required a targeting communications pod to be used to use the missile because it detects the location of the target from the targets emissions and then flys to the location.

All the ships they hit were recorded. But it's useless to show it to you since you will close your eyes and say it never happened.

They hit every ship Russia ever had... twice... most of which appear a few days later without a scratch.

If their ability at fighting the actual war was as good as their propaganda war they would be unstoppable.

But yeah it's true when Russia says it has downed 60 missile at once they don't need to prove it, you just eat the propaganda.

They have never claimed to have shot down anything like 60 missiles at one time.

These storm shadows and Scalps and Taurus missiles were going to destroy the Crimean bridge we were told and all they managed was a truck bomb and a sea surface drone.

Pathetic.

Only the Kilo sub cost two times more than all the missile used by Ukraine.

It was moderately damaged and is back in service, which is more than one can say about all the western armour on display in Russia in museums and parks.

They almost every month hit russian bases with great effectiveness.

For the money spent you could have gone to the moon and set up a moon base... or solved world hunger... but that never bothered the west did it?

Don't get me wrong, I am happy the west has revealed its evil side because the worst thing that could have happened to Russia is to be assimilated and converted into a btch for the yanks like Europe has.

Russia is stronger and healthier than it has ever been and its future looks very bright, and the west has burned bridges really good.

I think the prognosis for the patient is excellent but all these parasites are doomed.

They have 2 or 3 Patriot. At least 2 are around Kiev. 1 of the patriot at the begining shot down at least 5 sukhoi and 1 A-50U that fell in the sea.

Hahahaha... have you any idea how far it is from Kiev to the Sea of Azov?

Only 5... don't you mean 100?

They do a better job with them than russians with their tens of different S-400/300 buks, S300vM and tors in Crimea.

Not really, the Russian AD systems have shot down over 600 Ukrainian aircraft... not to mention how many missiles and rockets and drones.

Nato missiles easily hit targets in Crimea and the only russian defence is to threaten nuclear war to stop them.

Yeah, cluster munitions on a public beach, you must be so proud.

Without stealth, jets have no use.

F-35s don't seem to be much use either?

If they are so amazing why not offer Kiev Rafales and F-35s and just take out the Russian military overnight?

The Su-35 has much lower RCS than a regular Flanker. It is like 2m sq instead of 8m sq. It uses more composites and has coatings in the engine inlets to reduce RCS.

External weapons always makes such estimates a joke.

A Kilo submarine, even if it was written off, is worth what? $200 million USD?

It has already returned to service.

As has the Karakut that was hit in port.

The Russians destroyed a lot of Ukrainian aircraft with their air defenses.

To be fair the Ukrainian air defence has probably killed way more people... their own civilians mostly.

Again idiot proof...after the war NATO will deny or try to lower the value of actual weapons delivered any weapons delivery to Ukraine...

They will claim fewer numbers delivered and claim many were destroyed in warehouses before they could be used and then overcharge them so they never pay the loan back fully and continue to provide an income to the west like they do with the third world.

Long story short, they delivered everything they could and they didn't turn the tide.

Initial surprise and the occasional minor success over something new, and then the Russians learned to deal with it and then they just get shot down a lot.

Can't say the same for Iskander and Kinzhal and Onyx and indeed most Russian attack weapons...

If it was A-50 it was friendly fire.

Must have been hit by 100 x S-400s because the pieces that were left were tiny and still haven't been found... you would think the Americans would be keen to find that evidence...

[quote]They were anhilated and they stoped using them until they came up with copies of US gliding kits.[quote]

The Russians developed glide kits quite some time ago but never cleared them for use because their existing glide bombs are actually cheaper than anything the west uses... even include ATGMs.

In a COIN type situation their avionics systems means they don't even need glide kits to accurately deliver dumb bombs.

If they copied US glide kits I doubt they would be very cheap or effective.., the US has a great skill of making complex expensive things even more complex and expensive.

Russian doctrine for the su-34 was to fly above the enemy and take hits while bombing them.

Put that back up your arse where you got it from. The only aircraft designed to take hits in combat are A-10 and Su-25 and Russian attack helicopters.

The Su-34 has armour for the crew for very low altitude flights when small arms fire might be a problem to an aircraft like an F-16 or Rafale that has no armour.

They just switched to western tactics.

The western tactics in Syria is don't penetrate defended airspace with aircraft... use super expensive stealth planes and standoff weapons and run away.

A supersonic yak-130 could do what su-34 is doing now.

There are no supersonic Yak-130s.

Any jets can launch those gliding bombs.

So if any jet can do it then it is just fine doing it.

Totally useless plane.

It has killed lots of nazis in the last three years... and still going...

Isos wrote:  They don't even survive on their airbases  let alone on the front. They were anhilated and they stoped using them until they came up with copies of US gliding kits.

They did not stop using the Su-34s. They were still being used just with cruise missiles and other long range weapons. After Russia stopped doing deep ground forces thrusts into Ukrainian territory there was just no purpose in sending the Su-34 there either. According to Russian doctrine the aviation supports the ground offensive not the other way around.

As for being hit while on the ground in an airbase you can hardly blame the aircraft for that. It could have happened with any other plane.

Isos wrote:Russian doctrine for the su-34 was to fly above the enemy and take hits while bombing them. Guess what ? It was a dumb doctrine and they lost a shit ton of them. They just switched to western tactics.

A supersonic yak-130 could do what su-34 is doing now. Any jets can launch those gliding bombs.

Totally useless plane.

Untrue. They always were supposed to take out the air defenses first and then do high altitude bombing outside of MANPADS range. They can also do low altitude bomb releases but that is not the default method of operation. Why would they need the Platan electro-optical sensor to do low altitude bombing runs? The whole way Platan is designed suggests it was made to do high-altitude bombing runs. It has a narrow field of view, it isn't gimballed and they placed it in between the engine intakes, which means it will only have good visibility at high altitude.

As for the Yak-130 it would be hard pressed to pull up a FAB-500 let alone the FAB-3000.
You are comparing an aircraft which can carry 3 tons payload (Yak-130), with an aircraft which can carry 14 tons payload (Su-34).

As for the armor in the Su-34 it is in the cockpit to protect the pilots. No aircraft is fully armored. That would be prohibitive in terms of payload.

caveat emptor wrote:I'm pretty sure that we wouldn't see this levels of plane losses if UMPK kits were in the arsenal since day 1 of the war.

Heavy fighter bomber losses are just a minor detail. Russia lost at worst a single year of Su-35 and Su-34 production in Ukraine in all three years of combat. And those are the UMPK carriers you talk about.

What you could say is that because of the lack of UMPK the whole offensive was blunted and this gave Ukraine more time to dig in. Increasing ground forces losses unnecessarily.

Attrition of Su-25 and attack helicopters was much worse. And that is the real problem in terms of aircraft losses. But like other people have pointed out, in comparison with other major conflicts like Vietnam the helicopter losses aren't as high either.

caveat emptor wrote:Whole philosophy of the arms procurement will have to be reinvented. Currently, MoD were buying weapons at, pretty much, producer prices, while whole R&D process and technological upgrades were done by profits from exports. They should start paying for weapons somewhat higher price, where price would include a healthy 10-15% profit margins, so weapon companies don't have to rely exclusively on exports.

That is unnecessary. R&D and factory upgrades are currently budgeted as separate expenses, the government provides a budget for them, and that works just as well. You are seeing everything through a Western market driven lens. What must be stopped of course is the current fetish of selling a system for below cost to get the contract only to lose money on production and sales to the government afterwards. The government needs accurate prices.

caveat emptor wrote:Another thing is where military constantly keeps changing requirements and new weapon systems take forever to go to the troops. Most glaring example would be Koalitsiya, 2S35, which is in development well over 10 years and after 2.5 years of war is nowhere to be found at the front. Toward the end of 2015 announcement was made for serial production to start in 2016. State tests that took 6(!) fricking years. All that while military in Ukraine is using en masse 60+ year old arty taken from reserve.

It is perfectly normal for a whole new revolutionary weapons platform like Koalitsiya to take a decade to develop. What is not normal is them watering down the Msta-SM upgrade program. The major artillery factory left was starved of orders and lacks personnel and machine tools. The other artillery factory was closed. At a time NATO forces in Europe were all modernizing their artillery.

Belisarius wrote:You have to be really stupid to think that improvised wings will make a 1.5/3 ton bomb glide for 70 km.

What is so surprising about that? JDAM-ER has a range of 72 km. The SDB has a range of 111 km. It is released at high altitude and high speed. Weight has nothing to do with it.

caveat emptor wrote:
I'm talking about normal profit margin and not what happens in US MIC where you have price gouging. As for, government paying for technical upgrades to the factories, it went so well that they're doing these upgrades in the middle of the war. Not to mention, complete negligence where some manufacturing and repair companies were sold by the kilo, as they were completely destroyed.

That happened. For example at the factory which makes the BMP-3. They skimmed the money that would have gone to install tooling to make the Kurganets. But some factories were in fact upgraded. Even the factory which makes the Kurganets did not get that tooling but everything there was fixed and BMP-3 production was increased.
In the artillery factory I doubt such investments were made since there were few contracts made with it.

caveat emptor wrote:This "analogov net" trope is so tiring and old that became a meme for a reason. Serbia, with it's very limited budget for R&D, developed, for our capacity, revolutionary SPG NORA for much shorter time then Russia is doing. Let me remind you that about 20 years ago, a major upgrade to Msta called Iset ( with completely new cannon barrel with longer range and better ballistics,) that was completely ready to go,was cancelled in favor of Koalitsiya. In the meantime, they were developing two versions of Koalitsiya, single and double barreled. Double barreled was canceled in 2010 (!). Fourteen years ago.

Like I said. Cancelling the Msta-SM upgrade (the original one with the longer barrel) was a mistake. They knew NATO was all upgrading its artillery to be longer range. They tried leapfrogging everything with Koalitsiya and they got delays. In fact they are lucky it even worked as well as it did. The US programs to make improved artillery since the XM2001 Crusader have been failures.

Belisarius wrote:JDAM-ER is the result of more than 3 decades of improvement of the basic JDAM that had no more than 30 km range, you can't expect the newest and most recent UMPK to have the results of the JDAM-ER.

You say that weight has nothing to do with it, but I must remind you that the SDB you mention weighs only 110 kg.

The fact is, the idea that Russian aircraft don't need to expose themselves to enemy AD to launch guided bombs is bullshit.

The basic JDAM does not have wings. It just has a tail kit.


JDAM-ER is the winged version.


Shows how little you know really.

It is more about release speed, altitude, lift, and streamlining, than weight.

Why do YOU expect a winged Russian bomb to have similar range to the non-winged US original JDAM?

Belisarius wrote:I can say the same about your knowledge of physics, if I ask you to throw a tennis ball and then a basketball, which one will you be able to throw further?
And yet you are here saying that "Weight has nothing to do with it"...
Not to mention that even with 70km range, a flanker armed with UMPK is still forced to come within range of systems like the Patriot to carry out an attack.

Like I said it has little to do with it. It depends mostly on initial velocity and altitude.

A Su-34 won't even break a sweat with a FAB-3000. It is just 3 tons and it can carry like 14 tons.

As for weight it is countered by wing lift. Which is why the larger bombs have more wing area.

You must think the Ukrainians have Patriot SAMs growing on trees or something. They only have a limited number of such systems. 70km is enough to get out of NASAMs, Buk, etc range.

Arkanghelsk wrote:Su34 needs a basic UV/IR MAWS, better designator with unobstructed 360 degree view, automated self protection suite, c3 datalink capability with command posts, SAM units, and other aircraft that mark targets on shared BMS, and better RWR/ECM suite

The Su-35 already has MAWS. The OLS-K of the MiG-35 has 360 degree view. So such systems exist. They would just need to integrate them on the Su-34.

I would also say that Russia should add support for the Chinese Beidou as an optional system to GLONASS and GPS on existing weapons systems. It is currently more accurate than either GLONASS or GPS at those altitudes in Ukraine and is not controlled by the West.