Su-25 attack aircraft

Serial Su-25UBM appear in 2014
The first production Su-25UBM for the Russian Air Force will be released Ulan-Ude Aviation Plant in 2014, reports "Interfax" referring to a source in the military-industrial complex. Technological preparation for series production aircraft will begin in 2012. Assembling the stormtroopers and their delivery to the troops provided for state armaments program for 2011-2020.

As expected, the mass production of the Su-25UBM will continue at least until 2020. At present, negotiations are underway for the supply of such aircraft to several countries, therefore, subject to possible foreign orders release of storm troopers continue after 2020.

Earlier it was reported that the Russian Air Force signed an act of completion of the state tests of the Su-25UBM, which is a deep modernization of the Su-25UB. This aircraft can be used for pilot training and for combat missions. Compared to its predecessor, the flight characteristics of the Su-25UBM not changed, but its combat capabilities have increased dramatically.

As part of the modernization program of attack aircraft, it set a new sighting and navigation system "Leopard", which includes processing and display system information, system of satellite and short-range navigation and electronic intelligence station. In the cockpit there are two liquid-crystal displays.

Interesting they have export interest... this would be a very effective COIN aircraft.

Another thing to point out is that the Su-25UBM is basically the two seat Su-25 with an Su-25SM upgrade.

The Su-25T and Su-25TM were both based on the two seat version with more space for avionics and fuel and fitted out as single seaters. The Su-25SM is a single seater.

Production of new build Su-25UBM show, that in long term Russia will not replace CAS planes with multifunctional as it is now trend in the West, but will old Su-25 be replaced with new build Su-25UBM, which will fly for decades. If they will place day/night targeting pod on centerline pylon, than it will become all weather CAS plane, which could made another excellent duet SU-25UBM - Mi-28N as was duet Su-25 - Mi-24.

I totally agree, night and all weather targeting capability with guided missiles and bombs will greatly improve their ability to support ground forces.

A new DIRCMs and ESM system will also greatly reduce losses... the losses in South Ossetia were due reportedly to BUK and multiple MANPADS... several aircraft made it back to base with one engine trashed. DIRCM should deal with that.

With guided weapons and DIRCM Su-25UBM will be less exposed to MANPADs, than by using only dumb bombs and rockets. I wonder if it will be equipped with similar data link as Ka-52, that they could share datas of targets.

The Russian Air Force has completed flight tests of the modernized Sukhoi Su-25UBM ground attack-trainer aircraft, Defense Ministry spokesman Col. Vladimir Drik said on Tuesday.

“Air Force commander Col. Gen. Alexander Zelin signed off on the completion of flight tests for the Su-25UBM at the end of December 2011,” Drik said.

The Su-25UBM is a heavily modernized variant of the Su-25 capable of training and strike missions, and is fitted with a new radar, more powerful and accurate weapons, an automated mission system and increased battlefield survivability and reliability.

The Su-25UBM, which will replace the older Su-25UB, has similar combat capability to the single-seat Su-25SM strike aircraft and is day, night and poor-weather capable.

http://www.en.ria.ru/mlitary_news/20120110/170692803.html

Fitted with a new radar?

The Su-25UBM, which will replace the older Su-25UB, has similar combat capability to the single-seat Su-25SM strike aircraft and is day, night and poor-weather capable.

The Su-25SM was supposed to be fitted with a nose mounted radar as a cheap way of giving it day and night and all weather capability, but in the end they decided on going the even cheaper route of having a pod mounted Kopyo radar mounted on the centreline when needed.

This article seems to suggest the two seat model is getting its radar... anyone have pictures?

To be honest I think a Sapsan targeting pod in the belly mount position might be a good compromise for the two seat Frogfoot as the second crewman can concentrate on scanning for targets, while the pilot flys the plane.

Note the Su-25T and the Su-25TM upgraded aircraft with Vikhr ATGMs and the Shkval-M electro optic targeting system (related to the system fitted to the Ka-50 Hokum) didn't get anywhere because it was considered too expensive... which was a shame.

Definitely has no radar, basically an updated, two seat Su-25SM3. Kopyo pod is not in use with Su-25SM units in any case, unfortunately.

Su-25T had a number of problems, both with airframe and systems, expense was not the only issue, keep that in mind.
Same with Sapsan, looks like new pod is realistic alternative to inadequate UOMZ Sapsan.

Same with Sapsan, looks like new pod is realistic alternative to inadequate UOMZ Sapsan.

New pod?

Are they using Damocles?

I remember a while back that Piotr Butowski had an article in AFM or AirInt that mentioned the Solluks pod.

I would think a targeting pod would be the simplest and cheapest way to give the aircraft day and night all weather capability for minimum outlay.

A decent pod with thermal sights, laser rangefinder/target marker, and Glonass would enable the pilot to lase a target and pass precise target data to any on board GLONASS guided bombs or laser homing missiles on the fly.

BTW it doesn't really matter whether SAPSAN is bad or not... for old model Mig-29s it will give them decent air to ground capability, and further improved models will do better.

The old Soviet technology Mercury thermal imaging pod was no good either, but as they improve their abilities new pods should be well worth looking at.

Look at the strides forward their ECM pods have made with new electronics.

Hi
Here you can see a Su 25UBM fitted with a Kopyo radar http://www.ruaviation.com/news/2011/4/19/261/
and here a comment about that http://www.ruaviation.com/news/2010/12/17/51/

best regards

Thanks.

BTW I notice this is your first post, and as a mod I am compelled to remind you that it is a forum rule that your first post should be an introduction in the "Welcome to the Russian Military Forum" section there is a subsection called "Member Introductions and Rules" where you can create a new thread and post a short introduction to introduce yourself.
We can then say hi.

Note this is a courtesy thing so the rest of the boards members have an idea about who they are talking to, you don't need to delete existing posts, but please make your next post an introduction...

It only takes a few seconds and is quite painless and while you are in that section you might like to flick through the introductions of other members to get an idea of who you are talking to.

Ah, thats actually a good photo, thanks man, if that is indeed the new build Su-25UBM, never seen it with Kopyo. Ofc, talk of trials ending has been had for years now, and the question of the Air Force actually getting Kopyo pods is another thing altogether.

Certainly hope it happens, operating with only dumb weaponry is getting long in the tooth.

Actually all Su-25s can operate laser guided bombs and rockets, though with the laser system in the tip of the nose they can mark targets for their own missiles but would need another aircraft to mark targets for bombs.

(ie one aircraft hangs back and marks the target with its laser while another aircraft flys towards the target and releases a laser guided bomb and then can turn away.

For missiles like the Kh-25ML and Kh-29L they can mark their own targets.

According to info I have from 2004 the Su-25SM has the Bars digital avionics system (note in a news report I have seen mention that Bars-2 is fitted to the Su-25UBM), the Pastel ESM system, and an active electronic jamming station, HUD, and MFD.
Onboard testing and system monitoring systems reduces maintainence and service times by 25-30%.

Personally I hope they have added the guidance computer they were displaying for the Su-24M and Tu-22M3, that generates projected impact points for unguided rockets and bombs in free flight.

It means a circle appears in the HUD and the pilot just manouvers the aircraft to put the circle on the target and then releases the weapon to get a good chance of a hit.

It greatly increases the accuracy of dumb weapons against the sort of visible targets the Su-25 was designed to engage, for a small initial outlay.

Most of the time precision guided weapons are good for dangerous point targets, but for most targets you want the accuracy of a guided weapon with the cost of an unguided bomb or rocket... the computer aiming system offers that.

Of course they need some guided weapons as well... GLONASS guided bombs in the 50kg, 100kg, and 250kg weight range would be ideal for using near friendly troops to hit enemy targets without leveling the whole village.

Of course if you corner some terrorists in a mountain valley a few FAB-3000 or even FAB-9000 bombs delivered by Tu-22M3s would do the trick too.

The Ugroza guidance kits for rockets would also improve the performance of the Su-25SM as each rocket suddenly gets the accuracy of an ATGM and can be used at extended ranges with confidence of a hit.

Carrying HERMES like weapons will be useful, but a 20 shot rocket pod with 80mm guided rockets each able to take out a truck or bunker with a single shot maximises its performance, and with terminal guidance it means rockets can be fired from max range which increases the safety of the aircraft by using the weapons from standoff range.

Of course these days they could have a high flying UAV with a laser target marker just circling the targets with Su-25s lofting laser homing rockets towards the targets for max standoff range and minimal exposure to enemy fire.

Fitting an Su-25 with a targeting pod like Damocles means it could operate above enemy fire and still find and engage targets much more cheaply than a medium fighter could.

The satellite navigation and laser ranging allowing the pod to calculate the coordinates of the target means that data could be directly passed to satellite guided bombs under the Su-25s wings and released in real time... lighter weight bombs minimising the threat to nearby friendly forces.

(Note my emphasis on friendly forces nearby is because the CAS role of the Su-25 is to engage targets close to friendly forces giving them problems... it might be a bunker or tank or it could be a machine gun position amongst rocks or a sniper position identified by ground forces. Bombs of 50-250kg means you can release the weapons nearer to friendly troops than you could with standard 500kg or heavier bombs safely... the precision meaning they are still effective on target despite being lighter.)

Su-25UBM on the picture looks the same standard as Su-25SM, so it could also show the level of modernization for existing Su-25UB into Su-25UBM, on the other hand new build Su-25UBM could be redesigned for better equipment and to use radar, because they will have the whole lifetime beneath them and will work for a longer time.

The Su-25UBM has the advantage of two crew so the guy in the back can be using radar or damocles like targeting pod to find and engage targets while the pilot keeps the bird in the air and looks for threats and targets.

With the powerful magnified all weather optics of a targeting pod the aircraft can fly higher (and safer) in COIN operations.

The built in satellite navigation should allow forces on the ground to give the Frogfoot specific coordinates to look to find the threats/targets which should make the search even easier.

As targeting pods have laser target markers that can rotate and point below and behind the aircraft it can be used for laser guided bombs, while the nose mounted laser system can be used for laser guided rockets and missiles.

http://en.rian.ru/mlitary_news/20120221/171427430.html

Russian Air Force to Receive New Attack Aircraft by 2020

The deliveries of new close air support aircraft to the Russian Air Force will start by 2020, Air Force spokesman Col. Vladimir Drik said.

“The Air Force units will start receiving this aircraft by 2020,” Drik said on Monday. “It will gradually replace highly-reliable Su-25SM Frogfoot attack planes.”

According to Drik, the new aircraft will meet the demands of modern warfare and feature elements of “stealth” technology, the whole range of tactical weaponry, modern radar and navigation equipment.

Meanwhile, Russia will continue to upgrade its outdated Su-25 attack aircraft to Su-25SM version, which has a significantly better survivability and combat effectiveness.

The Russian Air Force currently has over 30 Su-25SM planes in service and plans to modernize about 80 Su-25s by 2020, Drik said.

http://www.sukhoi.ru/forum/showthread.php?t=74910

Around 50 Su-25SM have been completed today. Another 80 are expected through 2020.

That is good news.

Interesting the reports about a new CAS aircraft being worked on for 2020 that will include stealth capabilities.

The thing is that the biggest threats to CAS are not radar based, normally it is IR guided SAMs and small arms fire from the ground....

As we all saw with the Commanche helo, ground attack aircraft can't be too expensive because to a certain degree they will get damaged in the normal course of doing their job.

Stealth requires extreme precision and very fine tollerances in production and manufacturing... a little battle damage can ruin millions of dollars worth of effort.

New stealth CAS will propably be sth like Lockheed F-117 Nighthawk?

George1 wrote:New stealth CAS will propably be sth like Lockheed F-117 Nighthawk?

100% certain to be nothing like the F-117

I think people are reading too much into the stealth thing IMO, I don't even sea a brand new aircraft ready so soon, unless it is a modified current platform with RCS reduction perhaps.

F-117 was a medium range bomber whose main feature was stealth.

In fact you could do the work of an F-117 with two cruise missiles, the difference being the F-117 was harder to detect with radar, but the cruise missiles travelled much further.

I remember quite a long time ago there being a photo in a magazine that showed what looked like a heavily modified Su-25.

It had a tail mounted pusher propeller for propulsion and a rear mounted straight wing, while up the front it had two sets of canards. The photo of the aircraft was actually a photo of a black plastic model and the wings had a hinge where they folded which suggests this aircraft was designed for carrier use as well as land based use.

It wouldn't be particularly hard to reshape the aircraft to make it more stealthy if not actually stealthy, the photo was from a rear quarter so it was not possible to see any sensors on the nose.

The low number of radar guided short range missiles and the common use for CAS aircraft in low intensity conflicts means radar protection via stealth should be actually a very low priority and IR stealth should be rather more important. the large contrarotating propfan engine on the model would be an improvement in that regard.

GarryB wrote:F-117 was a medium range bomber whose main feature was stealth.

In fact you could do the work of an F-117 with two cruise missiles, the difference being the F-117 was harder to detect with radar, but the cruise missiles travelled much further.

I remember quite a long time ago there being a photo in a magazine that showed what looked like a heavily modified Su-25.

It had a tail mounted pusher propeller for propulsion and a rear mounted straight wing, while up the front it had two sets of canards. The photo of the aircraft was actually a photo of a black plastic model and the wings had a hinge where they folded which suggests this aircraft was designed for carrier use as well as land based use.

It wouldn't be particularly hard to reshape the aircraft to make it more stealthy if not actually stealthy, the photo was from a rear quarter so it was not possible to see any sensors on the nose.

The low number of radar guided short range missiles and the common use for CAS aircraft in low intensity conflicts means radar protection via stealth should be actually a very low priority and IR stealth should be rather more important. the large contrarotating propfan engine on the model would be an improvement in that regard.

Stealth CAS means that the new aircraft will have its weapons in an internal bay. So that means a fatter design with smaller wings

http://russianmilitaryphotos.wordpress.com/2012/04/15/the-su-25sm3/attachment/071915/



Su-25SM3

Stealth CAS means that the new aircraft will have its weapons in an internal bay. So that means a fatter design with smaller wings

Quite true... the real question however is what sort of stealth do they mean?

The Commanche program largely was cancelled when they realised that threats like Tunguska and then Pantsir-S1 didn't rely totally on radar for engaging targets so the Commanche, for all its cost in terms of development, the high cost of buying it, and the high service cost of maintaining its stealth, yet a widely deployed air defence system could engage it at ranges exceeding those with which it could retaliate.

Ironically the Il-106 had very thick wings and had weapon bays inside those wings for 250kg bombs... it also had a powerful main gun and a rear gunner position operating a tail gun.

The main problem is that for most CAS roles a couple of bombs is not enough... to be effective in the CAS role you need a decent gun... the twin 30mm cannon of the Mi-24, the GSh-30K I think would be ideal as it has a lower rate of fire but a higher muzzle velocity than the related GSh-30 of the Su-25.

After the campaign in Georgia the Su-25 pilots mentioned the rate of fire of the cannon was too high, so the gun on the Hind should be a better option with a high and low fire rate option and higher muzzle velocity.

You also need the capacity to carry large numbers of cheap rockets for use against area targets and light bombs are also useful for harder large targets or groups of enemy.

Some sort of guided standoff weapons would also be valuable but need to be cheap enough to use in large numbers and considering the direction the Russian military is going I would say a range of options would be needed.

I would say the TV, Laser, and IIR guided models of Kh-25 would be useful and the TV and IIR guided Kh-29s for really hard targets like heavy bridges would be good for unusual targets that are well defended. Add to that the Ugroza laser guidance kits for unguided rockets in the 80mm and 122mm rocket calibres would be cheaper yet very effective for small targets like trucks and APCs with HE Frag and HEAT warheads respectively. Finally the Hermes series of missiles would also be useful as it can be carried in large numbers and be effective against point targets because of their guided accuracy to compensate for the smaller 30kg warhead.

For bombs a mix of dumb and guided bombs is best with TV, laser, IR guided and satellite guided and their combinations would be most useful.

The most important stealth for a CAS aircraft would be in the IR range to make it hard to get a lock with a MANPAD like Stinger or Igla.

Obviously a self defence suite like DIRCMS would also make engagement with IR and optically guided weapons difficult too.

As you can probably tell this contrasts sharply with the F-117 which spends all its time flying at medium altitude and its primary weapon load is two laser guided bombs.

The serial production of upgraded Su-25 will be started in December

The upgraded Su-25 strike-fighter is undergoing flight testing. Its serial production will be started in December 2012 and it will receive a new designation, Izvestiya reports.
The lessons learned during the war in Transcaucasia in 2008 were taken into account during upgrading of Su-25. «Su-25SM aircraft have been taking part in this war and three of them have been lost. The vulnerabilities of the strike-fighter have been found out, for example, the jet does not have a tactical EW suite able to countervail the advanced antiaircraft defenses and fighters. In addition, Su-25 is still using only unguided aircraft-launched missiles and general-purpose bombs. There is a possibility of using guided Kh-25 and Kh-29 missiles, but Su-25’s weapon-aiming system does not meet the advanced requirements», - a source from the air force command said.
According to him, Su-25 and Su-25SM jets are limited in capabilities under conditions of severe weather and at night. In addition, both aircraft are unable to use bombs adjusted by GLONASS. The experience gained during modern conflicts (for example in Libya) shows that the jet must hit targets without entering the area of coverage of the enemy air defense systems, using high-precision weapons under any weather and lighting conditions.
The upgraded Su-25 is equipped with advanced tactical EW suite “Vitebsk-25” developed by Ekran (Samara). The jet is also equipped with the weapon-aiming system allowing usage of Kh-29 guided missiles and KAB-KR aircraft controlled bombs with television guidance. The image from the homing head is transmitted to the display located in the cockpit.
Besides new tactical EW suite and weapon-aiming system, the upgraded Su-25 is equipped with new encrypted communications system with a range of 1000 km. It helps integrate all the jet’s electronic equipment into a single automatic troop command system.
The navigation system has also been updated. Its key component is the receiver, which is able to surpass active and passive jamming using GPS-GLONASS channel. The jet will also be fitted with electro-optical thermal imagery camera, which is backing up the work of optical and radioelectronic search and homing systems.

http://www.ruaviation.com/news/2012/10/10/1267/