Future gunships for Russian Air Force

Now here is an idea, they could use high altitude airships to drop a glider variant of the FOAB from very high altitudes.

No need for FOABs. A transport plane flying higher than 5 km with 57 mm guns that have a way longer range (without even considering shooting from altitude makes range a trivial issue) than MAPADS can cover a big area and make sure the West's war on the cheap on Russia's allies is crushed. It is not necessary to be flying Sukhois when a cheaper plane can stay hours and hours above the battlefield and make sure no one will raise their head or they will lose it. That allows the friendly ground forces to advance way faster and with way less losses. Big bombs have a huge blast radius that prevent allied forces from being supported effectively, 57 mm is ideal. Some guided rockets would be great too, maybe some area weapon too but normally it will not be as effective, once your enemy knows there is a gunship above they will disperse as much as possible. Most important part is targetting, with good data links, abundant covering of the battlefield with UAVs and all other available platforms and advanced all weather multispectral automatic target recognition on board the gunship.

The Il-112V should be able to carry 2 57mm high or low velocity guns.
The Il-276 could add a 120mm gun-mortar.

Under the wings? Hermes/Klenok. Guided glide bombs. Suicide drones.

Hole wrote:The Il-112V should be able to carry 2 57mm high or low velocity guns.
The Il-276 could add a 120mm gun-mortar.

Under the wings? Hermes/Klenok. Guided glide bombs. Suicide drones.

Or they could simply carry tens if not hundreds of those guided bombs developed for drones and a laser pod under the wings.

Better precision and more effective like we saw in NK and they could launch them from very high.

Actually a su-25 could carry some ten per weapon pylon bringing the total number carried to 50 or more.

No need for more than that.

It changes nothing and has yet to be proven because the only use was from il 76.

That's an unguided bomb. If there id an AD nearby or a fighter with amraam missiles it's a dead bomber.

The actual drop was secret and no footage was released so most news agencies used the only footage of giant conventional bombs... an American daisy cutter rolling out the back of a C-130... no other footage was shown so a bomb rolling out the back of clearly a transport plane it was assumed it was either dropped by an An-12 or Il-76... it was neither.

It was dropped by a Blackjack... the daisy cutter was used to clear a large area of heavy jungle to create a new helicopter base or artillery base in Vietnam... that is not what the Russians intend to use their new bomb for.

One of the reported uses will be against suspected chem or bio labs with the heat and longer combustion time of a thermobaric weapon neutralising the dangerous substances as well as destroying the equipment and personel.

It could also be used as a super TOS to defeat large areas of minefields or boobytrapped areas.

It would be useful to take on underground facilities you are not sure exactly where they are... you will know where the entrances and air vents are but not clear about where the tunnels and underground rooms actually are... a large thermobaric bomb over such a place would consume most of the oxygen in the air around it suffocating some of the people in and around...

In terms of shock and awe it would look like a nuke...

Now here is an idea, they could use high altitude airships to drop a glider variant of the FOAB from very high altitudes.

Being thermobaric a high altitude launch with wings to glide will extend standoff range, but high altitude release would be more use for ground penetrating anti bunker bombs...

Better precision and more effective like we saw in NK and they could launch them from very high.

With precision guidance you don't need a 44 ton bomb to take out a small light vehicle or group of people, and as long as that precision guidance does not make the bombs super expensive then you could carry enormous numbers of these weapons in combat.

The two problems are finding the targets to hit and getting the weapons on target... UAVs more specifically HALEs meant the eyes could remain very high and hard to see for very long periods... in fact use a few and you have continuous eyes on the battlefield, but the time difference between seeing the target and getting bombers or attack aircraft to hit that target meant the target often escaped, so HALES and MALES became armed...

Modern HALEs can have enormous flight ranges and excellent endurance periods but needed custom designed small guided weapons to make them effective... being able to fly 20,000km and stay in the air 48 hours at a time is no good if you run out of weapons after hour number 4...

An Airship can't fly fast but it can orbit a target area for weeks and would have the capacity to carry enormous numbers of very small guided weapons... both in weight capacity and volume capacity... and of course you can use that airship for controlling UAVs and even ground based drones that need line of sight datalinks... the whole top of the airship could be solar panels with electric motors and batteries and hydrogen fuel cells... it could operate at different altitudes as needed... it could even utilise high altitude jet streams to move into position quickly...

From an altitude of 20km then glide bombs and guns and even missiles like Shturm would have excellent performance... you could probably take out the HE warhead of Shturm and replace it with a 9kg DU bar and use it as a diving top attack weapon to defeat armour...

Glide weapons would have excellent performance and even ballistic weapons would have amazing reach and performance... laser command detonating rounds for airbursts and kinetic rounds for penetrating vehicles or buildings or bunkers...

Isos wrote:

Hole wrote:The Il-112V should be able to carry 2 57mm high or low velocity guns.
The Il-276 could add a 120mm gun-mortar.

Under the wings? Hermes/Klenok. Guided glide bombs. Suicide drones.

Or they could simply carry tens if not hundreds of those guided bombs developed for drones and a laser pod under the wings.

Better precision and more effective like we saw in NK and they could launch them from very high.

Actually a su-25 could carry some ten per weapon pylon bringing the total number carried to 50 or more.

No need for more than that.

Yeah! But keep the 57mm guns and add a 23mm Gatling. Just for fun.

If they are doing this then they should do it right

Use Il-76, install whatever gun is needed from 30mm gatling to 57mm (or bigger), make them double and stuff rest of the capacity with bombs

Il-76 is proven workhorse and is back in production, payload and range are more than sufficient

Overall Russia shouldn't​ need more than 10 gunships in total

With their Gefest & T bombing system I would say ditch the guns... a 105mm gun is a method of delivering a 20kg bomb of HE to a target 20km away... but in a plane it makes more sense to just carry the HE payload in the form of a bomb with no propellent charge or gun barrel... roll it out the back of the aircraft in flight... to reach a target 20km away turn and fly in that direction... in fact have a pneumatic gun or EMALS cats that fires bomb backwards at the speed the aircraft is flying at... so essentially the bomb stops and drops down vertically at enormous speeds... and you can carry bombs of any size for any target including guided bombs, glide bombs, laser homing bombs, optically guided bombs, satellite guided bombs, or just precision aimed dumb bombs for area targets... plus of course cluster bombs and smart munitions...

In fact what you could do is develop a frame like the ones fitted to cargo planes for carrying people in three or four levels of seats, or water for fire fighting or fuel for inflight refuelling... you could have a bomber rack conveyer system that could be fitted to any current cargo plane... the Il-276 is just a shorter Il-476 so a shorter rack system could be used, or you could design them to feed from another rack so put one rack in the Il276 and two racks in the Il-476 so you drop bombs from the rear rack while the front rack feeds its bombs into the rear rack to reload it... the Slon could have four racks... depending on its size.

I say leave the 57mm guns for the Su-57s... imagine the 7kg HE round of the 57mm grenade launcher with a full calibre triple shaped charge payload for anti armour top attack, plus the APFSDS round as well, though some sort of sabot that vapourises on firing so there are no engine ingestion issues... it would be a potent system.. the ground based weapon has a 120 round auto feed system... perhaps a lengthened fuselage with 240 rounds ready to fire... a sniper rather than a gatling gun type set up....

The Ministry of Defense has adjusted the requirements for the aircraft of close fire support

According to sources in the military-industrial complex, the arsenal of the Russian aircraft of direct fire support, in addition to the 57-mm cannon, will include guided aviation weapons - precision bombs and missiles

MOSCOW, January 25. / TASS /. The Russian Ministry of Defense has adjusted the requirements for a close-fire support aircraft being developed on the basis of a military transport aircraft. This aircraft is used to support troops on the battlefield. With artillery fire and guided munitions, it will strike enemy infantry, fortifications and armored vehicles day and night in any weather conditions. Work on the project began back in 2016. In 2019, it became known that the An-12 should become the base for it, but later it turned out that it did not meet the requirements for such a technique. Izvestia writes about this .

According to sources in the military-industrial complex, the arsenal of the Russian aircraft of direct fire support, in addition to the 57-mm cannon, will include guided aviation weapons - precision bombs and missiles. Earlier it was assumed that this aircraft will be armed only with artillery systems. The addition of guided munitions should turn the vehicle into a full-fledged fire support aircraft capable of hitting ground targets day and night in any weather.

The first contract for research work (R&D) on this topic was signed between the Ministry of Defense and PJSC "Il" back in 2016 (a copy of the document is at the disposal of the publication). Within its framework, the very possibility and expediency of creating an aircraft armed with artillery was investigated. R&D was completed and accepted by the defense department in December 2017.

New plans to create an aircraft of this type were announced in the summer of 2019. It was reported that at the first stage of research, the An-12 will be converted for it, on which two 57-mm automatic cannons will be installed.


“There is still no confidence that such a machine is needed by our armed forces,” said expert Vladislav Shurygin. “The Americans created their AC-130 for special operations forces. It is still used to support special operations. Such aircraft are suitable for attacks on militants. and terrorists, but they are completely unfit for a war with a serious enemy. "

The use of close-fire support aircraft

Close-fire support aircraft became famous during the Vietnam War. It was then that the strike version of military transport aircraft was first developed in the United States. Such vehicles with powerful weapons could patrol in the air for a long time and continuously fire at targets from cannons and machine guns, circling around them. In speed, range and firepower, they were noticeably superior to helicopters.

But already at the beginning of the 1970s, such aircraft began to suffer serious losses in Vietnam. Return fire from automatic cannons, air defense missiles and portable air defense systems managed to shoot down six AC-130s and a dozen of their predecessors, AC-47s.

Nevertheless, the use of aircraft of direct fire support continued. They were again actively demanded in the 2000s during the US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, in operations against terrorists in the Middle East.

Today the most recent model of such an American aircraft is the AC-130J Ghostrider. They are still equipped with a powerful 105mm howitzer. It is complemented by a rapid-firing automatic 30mm cannon. The new modification, unlike the machines of the Vietnam War, can also use guided bombs and missiles. It is planned to adopt 32 aircraft of this type.

The need for such aircraft was called into question after the operation against terrorists in Syria. According to statistics released by the Pentagon, conventional strike aircraft, including the A-10 Thunderbolt II attack aircraft, were involved there in the interests of special forces much more often than close-fire support aircraft. Nevertheless, the American military does not intend to abandon their use.

In the USSR, experiments were carried out to arm military transport aircraft, but they did not receive much development. The country's air force focused on confrontation with a serious high-tech enemy. With the presence of thousands of bombers, attack aircraft and fighters, such a specialized aircraft of close fire support was considered unnecessary, Izvestia reminds.

https://tass.ru/armiya-i-opk/10536591

An-12 will be used as a platform only for the first stage of research as it is mentioned. Then which could be the basic transport aircraft for the project? Il-76 is too large for such a role

George1 wrote:An-12 will be used as a platform only for the first stage of research as it is mentioned. Then which could be the basic transport aircraft for the project? Il-76 is too large for such a role

Il-76 maybe bit bigger but better to have some extra room than less, plus they can just load extra bombs and fuel

Also there is nothing smaller currently in production

Russia will not be needing more than dozen of these, probably even half that since it's a very niche role for Russian military (how often does Syria happen?)

Assigning several Il-76s as gunships should be a drop in the bucket

Il-76s would be of more use as cargo planes than for this silly role.

The fact that they are testing An-12s means they are looking at C-130 sized aircraft so that would be the Tu-330 or Il-276 range of platforms.

I suspect after testing they will conclude that a transport plane rolling bombs out the back end at 10km altitude with a precision bombing system like G&T, plus Su-25 and similar aircraft make rather more sense and are less vulnerable.

All the new drones and their new specialised drone weapons should allow large numbers of targets to be engaged from a cargo plane with long endurance and a huge capacity for ordinance.

Using guns in the direct fire role was just an attempt to get direct fire accuracy with what is essentially cheap dumb cannon fire... they already achieved as much with Su-24s and dumb iron bombs and bomb aiming suites. from altitude.

They could always use the Sprut's long recoil stroke 125mm.

While bombs and missiles are more efficient you will run into problems when you need to quickly engage targets as these weapons generally take a long time to reach the target and they are also quite expensive.

Ofcourse you do get faster missiles like the Hermes and the proposed hypersonic equivalents, but these weapons are both heavier and more expensive the the already expensive missiles they would be used in place of.

Ultimately while rather sub optimal a medium cannon like the 125mm would be a good choice for rapid engagement of targets, unless ofcourse they develop some form of high velocity rocket firing cannon which would be a much better option for an aircraft as it could be made very light and have minimal recoil.

GarryB wrote:Il-76s would be of more use as cargo planes than for this silly role.

The fact that they are testing An-12s means they are looking at C-130 sized aircraft so that would be the Tu-330 or Il-276 range of platforms.......

Operators in Syria requested something like this which makes it opposite of silly

As for the platform Tu-330 doesn't exist and Il-276 is at least a decade away so it will be Il-96 AKA aircraft which exists and is in production

They could always use the Sprut's long recoil stroke 125mm.

It makes no sense to use a very high velocity anti armour gun like that, because there is no benefit but lots of recoil to deal with.

They use the 105mm gun on the Spookys because it can direct 20kg bombs at targets quite accurately within about 20km range, but even then a 20kg bomb could be dropped with the Gefest & T system just as accurately and from a much greater (safer) altitude.

While bombs and missiles are more efficient you will run into problems when you need to quickly engage targets as these weapons generally take a long time to reach the target and they are also quite expensive.

I disagree. A 20kg iron bomb is not going to cost more than a 20kg HE shell along with the propellent to launch it from a gun.

I would think a specialised gun type system could be developed especially for use from transport aircraft or even air ships that uses compressed air to launch a shell in the direction of a target with minimal recoil and maximum consistency (accuracy).

Ofcourse you do get faster missiles like the Hermes and the proposed hypersonic equivalents, but these weapons are both heavier and more expensive the the already expensive missiles they would be used in place of.

The Hermes you are referring to could be on a vehicle 100km away from the incident needing support and will be able to support them from there without heavy slow transport planes needing to fly around over enemy positions.

Ultimately while rather sub optimal a medium cannon like the 125mm would be a good choice for rapid engagement of targets, unless ofcourse they develop some form of high velocity rocket firing cannon which would be a much better option for an aircraft as it could be made very light and have minimal recoil.

I would think the 100mm rifled gun of the BMP-3 is already low recoil and the round is almost all HE payload and when fired from altitude it should reach a useful distance with sufficient accuracy... but dumb bombs will still be more effective and cheaper IMHO.

Operators in Syria requested something like this which makes it opposite of silly

If you look at the requirements, it is for a persistent platform that can operate in an area for extended periods with more persistence than a helicopter or light attack aircraft, that is able to engage ground targets like enemy troops, as well as vehicles and fortifications.

The American solution is an AC-130 with various calibre guns mounted on it, but in the past it has proven vulnerable to enemy air defences... because it is slow and flys very low and it is a big target.

It is no good for any proper conflict against any opponent with any air power or air defence capability... it is essentially something you would use against ISIS or Al Quada.

I would say the best solution would be an airship... it could remain on station for months... it could carry any number of guns and bombs of all shapes and sizes... you could mount radar and optical sensors for monitoring the land below... if you make it a flat top design you could even operate UAVs from its top. You could cover the sides with solar panels, have it run on electric motors.... use batteries and hydrogen fuel cells managing lift and ballast. It could even be unmanned.

You could put radar sensors on it and have radio communications relay antennas on there too to boost friendly radio nets and listen in on enemy communications too.

A range of guns and bombs could be carried with various guidance systems including dumb bombs to simply be dropped vertically on targets, to weapons with glide kits with command control to allow it to be flown into moving targets.

What fortification could withstand an FAB-3000 dropped vertically down from 10km altitude?

Or 10 of them....

With active camouflage you could make it appear the same colour from below as the sky above it appears... it could be huge yet almost invisible... and cheap to operate too.

As for the platform Tu-330 doesn't exist and Il-276 is at least a decade away so it will be Il-96 AKA aircraft which exists and is in production

The An-12s they have in service wont last another decade so the Il-276 will be a priority... it is just a shortened smaller Il-476 using two engines instead of four... it should not take a decade to perfect... plus what is the urgency.

They have a few HALE and MALE drone types that could be used instead anyway.

The airborne 57mm guns will likely appear on Su-25s anyway, and their 120mm gun/mortars and 100mm rifled medium pressure gun from the BMP-3 are probably better suited to aircraft use than anything the US is currently using.

I would say if special forces want high velocity direct fire weapons to support their operations then a couple of Uran-9 unmanned vehicles with 30mm cannon, ATAKA missiles, and Shmel rockets would be their ideal solution for now... they could attach cages to its sides and use it to carry their packs as well.

I am sure they didn't say we want spookies... they would have said the US has direct fire heavy calibre guns on aircraft and we think that might be useful for us.

GarryB wrote:

They could always use the Sprut's long recoil stroke 125mm.

It makes no sense to use a very high velocity anti armour gun like that, because there is no benefit but lots of recoil to deal with.

They use the 105mm gun on the Spookys because it can direct 20kg bombs at targets quite accurately within about 20km range, but even then a 20kg bomb could be dropped with the Gefest & T system just as accurately and from a much greater (safer) altitude.

While bombs and missiles are more efficient you will run into problems when you need to quickly engage targets as these weapons generally take a long time to reach the target and they are also quite expensive.

I disagree. A 20kg iron bomb is not going to cost more than a 20kg HE shell along with the propellent to launch it from a gun.

My point was that dumb bombs need you to already be flying directly above the target and if you are not you will need to use a glide bomb or missile, both of which are expensive and rather slow to reach their targets.

Using such weapons would mean that your enemy will have a long time to react to your attack.

The point is that a Shell is cheaper than a glide bomb or ATGM and gets to the target sooner.

I appreciate what you are saying... it makes more sense to put a 125mm gun on a tank than to put anti tank guided missiles because you can carry vastly more tank gun shells and tank gun shells will do the job and be cheaper.

The problem is that you are not saying... hey... the Russian Air Force needs a tank.... what you are saying is that the Russian Army needs an enormous slow thinly protected bus to put a gun in because the shells it fires will be cheaper.

Transports flying low and slow over enemy targets is a huge risk, but would be necessary if you want to fire guns at targets.

If you want to drop bombs instead then you can fly at 10km altitude or higher... enemy on the ground might not even see them and certainly wont hear them.

I am suggesting a command guided bomb similar in concept to the Shturm and Ataka command guided missiles, which were cheap and produced in enormous numbers.

The command guidance kit is cheap and simple, as are the control surfaces you would need to add to a small dumb bomb for the guidance system to work.

A simple glide kit is merely wings that flip out when the bomb is released and the command system can steer the weapon to target... being released from 10km means it could achieve enormous speeds and glide out serious distances to targets... this is not for WWIII, this is for use against terrorists, so MMW radar can be used to find targets through cloud cover... lower flying small camera equipped UAVs can provide views of the target area, IIR sensors of different frequencies can see through cloud and rain...

But most importantly the system can be modular... the radar and IIR cameras can be in pods under the wings.... the bombs in racks that poke out the rear loading door, custom designed pallets with consoles and crew can be loaded in first before the bomb racks and the aircraft itself can be a normal transport plane flying orbits around the danger area on autopilot, with any excess payload capacity being fuel bladders to extend endurance and range. Speed is not important so it could fly with some of its engines shut down...

That means any time you need a "gunship" you can assemble one from existing transports in a couple of hours. The alternative would be having custom designed aircraft that might have to be flown from where ever... which could take days anyway.

Fitting a large gun like a 125mm gun or 100mm gun would need serious strengthening of the air frame and permanent changes to the design...

I suspect the 57mm gun mount they are testing might hang out the rear of the An-12 and could therefore hang out the rear of any transport plane, which would make it versatile.

The HE shell for the 57mm gun is the equivalent of a 100mm HE round, and the APFSDS round would be a rather capable and devastating against ground targets because of the angle it would be attacking them from.

The 30mm cannon of the A-10 gets a lot of publicity but its armour penetration is less than 80mm most of the time... this 57mm APFSDS round will be much longer and much heavier and travelling much much faster... I would guess penetration levels of 150-250mm if not better.

The point is that a Shell is cheaper than a glide bomb or ATGM and gets to the target sooner.

I would say most of the time the target never sees it coming so getting to the target sooner makes very little difference.

From a 10km launch most bombs will be supersonic on impact so you wont hear it and it will be rather small... you might see it if you are looking, but how many people look up all the time?

Sorry, I am terribly biased... I am just not impressed by Spookies. AC-47 and AC-130s.

GarryB wrote:
Sorry, I am terribly biased... I am just not impressed by Spookies.  AC-47 and AC-130s.

Well you have little reason to be they are ill conceived attempts at an artillery aircraft with sub optimal choice of armament.

Obviously against terrorists having a bunch of autocannon that can constantly fire on them is good, but having to close in to 1-2km is certainly not.

With your concept of a glide bomb platform you could atleast keep it a little further away and its barrages would be quite terrorfying, even if it would not be as fun as blasting away a whole town with a bunch of 57mm autocannon.

Another concept could be to add 4 or so 120mm gun mortars in turrets on top of the plane to allow for it to stay out of range of enemy MANPADS and essentially act as as high mobility artillery battery.

Ultimately though what I think would be best is a large aircraft with a long loiter time fitted with a few hundred under wing rockets, it could have pods for 122mm, 240mm and maybe even 300mm. You could also allow it to use the 240mm rockets of the TOS system. I think with a configuration like this you should be able to provide a varying levels of fire support form needing a shed removed to needing a whole town removed and all while staying out of range of manpads.

They have Il-76 in production now and it will only be speeding up plus there's plenty of them already in service

Lighter transports will be in higher demand due to need to replace old ones

If you have the monster airplane use the monster airplane

Il-96 ? Are you serious ?

Against a conventional force it won't operate near the front. Against guerillas they have su-34 which is less expensive to use than an il-96 or the tens of new drones thry are introducing and that cost 1/10 of just the fuel use to fly an il-96.

That's hilarious how russians always want to have everything US makes. Even their mistakes.

Il-76 not Il-96

My bad

That's hilarious how russians always want to have everything US makes. Even their mistakes.

All they have said is that they are testing 57mm guns from An-12 aircraft.... everything else is mere speculation.

The idea of a modular system would be interesting... something that could be fitted in the rear cargo hold of any transport, or even hung underneath a rather large airship.

Some sort of 57mm gun mount that can be extended out the rear of a transport aircraft in flight with its rear door open... you could even design it so it moves back and then drops down below the level of the aircraft and is therefore able to rotate 360 degrees.

But even better than that imagine an EMALS based gun that launches 20kg shells with stabiliser fins attached that can fire these HE bombs in any direction rearwards from the aircraft it is mounted on... you could shower the ground with HE bombs and launch them well away from the aircraft to hit targets rapidly an with less warning.

Most of the buzz about the spookies was the impressive light display... mainly due to the use of gatling guns with tracer rounds.

Their performance in combat was constantly over rated however... the great laotian truck eating dragon is a myth it created.... the myth is that the dragon would come passed after you usual successful Spookie strike and eat up the remains of all the trucks that the AC-47 destroyed in the attack, so that the next day when they photographed the area that is why there were never as many enemy truck carcases as the crews had claimed they had killed.

I would think in terms of size and endurance an airship would be the best solution in terms of volume and staying on station for long periods and of course all the observation and other equipment you could fit on there for listening in and even aiding friendly forces comms and interfering or even jamming enemy comms...

Guys reading the discussion... I believe Russian AC-130 is needed. Why?

Sure it will be a huge target for MANPADS and close to useless in a war with contemporary army. But such wars are very rare and typically short lived. Russian strategists probably foresee a future where there will be a lot of Proxy wars where a regular army will fight a comparatively weak guerilla / paramilitary force like Islamic extremists.

In these situations aircraft like that are ideal. They can unleash much more destruction per sortie than any CAS aircraft ever could. I have long time ago said that Russia needs aircraft like that. Seems i was spot on. AC-130 isn't used just in special operations. They were ectensively used against Taliban in "common" operations as well.

Imagine you have large amounts of very cheap VBIEDs roaming around mixed with typical Toyota war tactics. Using guided munitions to destroy these vehicles, fortified positions, bunkers, buildings is too costly. + Platforms that carriers them typically don't have the loitering time as big as this gunship would have. I would bet that is is far more cheaper to destroy a typical T-55 or T-72 in the hands of rebels by 57mm cannon from the top aspect ratio than fire an Vikrh or Ataka ATGM or even use a bomb for this... be it FAB-100 or FAB-250.

Yes such a plane will be a big target for SHORADs, MANPADS and static emplacements like ZU-23. But keep in mind that such planes always have defensive suites, active, passive EW capabilities.
Technology has progressed since Vietnam times and United States will want to limit influence of Russia in world and for that they will use proxy state/non-state actors with comparatively weak capabilities. And this is exactly a use-case scenario where such a gunship would shine.

It is going to be interresting to see which platform would be selected for this role. But i would prefer to have a turboprop platform simply because of their ability to easily use airstrips and not needing to use paved runways. This would enable the airforce to station the airplanes close to the conflict zone frontline even in regions where no close airfields are located.

If nothing else guys remember, Russia military has a whole institute to study the future threats and recommend policies and projects to ministry of defense. The way i see it: if this gunship project was offering only marginal capabilities then rest assured they would not finance its development. Russian military budget is strained already as it is. But since they are financing it even after finding out that the original platform AN-12 that was planned for it was found to be insufficient - that tells me that they are dead serious about it and they see a lot of value and potential.

A solution could be a pilotless plane the size of the Il-112V fitted with 57mm guns, rocket pods and so on. Gives you the fire support of a "gunship" but without putting the crew in danger.