Fate of Russia's old birds.

I am ashamed to admit that in the early 1980s I found most Soviet fighters a bit boring... they never had decent photos of them, and most looked like tubes like the MiG-15 to 21 and the Su-7/9/11/17/20/22 family.... the 25 and 23/27 were interesting, as was the Su-15 and 24/25, but at the time I saw them all as being more practical than being attractive.

These days I like a good look at the older planes because we always only ever see the newer ones and the older ones look interesting again.

Think I got this from here somewhere...

When the Mig-25 appeared the West was convinced that it was some kind of super fighter, but it was only with Victor Belenko's defection that they realized the Mig-25 was nothing more than a fast interceptor. On the other hand they had every reason to fear the strike capabilities of the Su-24 and the Tu-22M's!

The core problem was ignorance... and agendas... nothing gets you big money contracts like the bad guys have a new super plane.

The MiG-25 being a very fast interceptor should not have been a surprise the Soviets never pretended it was anything but a smaller lighter faster Tu-128 interceptor... or a bigger heavier Su-15... fly as fast as it can to get as close to its targets as needed to launch missiles and then return home.

Often interested parties in the west will talk up Soviet and Russian equipment to get their product promoted, but somehow it is the Soviet or Russian fault for not making what the west hyped it up to be.

Soviet and Russian weapons are made for very specific situations and very specific uses and those conditions and requirements might not make sense in the west... for instance the Soviets and Russians have been under threat of naval and air attack from the west so they have developed a very capable interlinked air defence network... and not just an air force air defence but also navy and army air defence as well as coastal naval defence... HATO hasn't got that because there is no air threat to HATO... so their armies have token or weak air defence and they rely on their attack air power to also defend.



Speaking of the Backfire... notice the single twin barrel 23mm cannon in the tail... it has a muzzle velocity of only a 700m/s but its projectile is rather heavy for its calibre and it is the heavy 23 x 152mm projectile that it uses at about 3,500rpm... but it also clearly is carrying three heavy anti ship missiles of the Kh-22M family... but not only that if you look just in front of the main wheels on the right hand side you can see the multiple ejector racks loaded with dumb iron bombs too... so this is a very well armed aircraft.

The specs for the export version state it can carry up to ten missiles which for me means one on each wing pylon and one on a pylon under each engine nacelle (which in this photo has the bombs on it) and the centreline missile is missing with 6 more missiles inside the internal weapon bay.

AFAIK the only missile the Backfire could carry like that was the Kh-15 short range attack missile... but that was nuke armed and therefore not likely for export.

We see in a recent article that they are making a new hypersonic version of the Kh-31 for use internally on the Su-57 and presumably on other platforms, and there is an enormous array of new missiles and bombs they are developing that upgraded Backfires will be able to carry in the future... including a mach 6 missile with 1,500km flight range... which would be rather useful.

Foxbat B would be the HATO codename for it, or the ASCC code.

Shame they didn't get to use the RB model...

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8jdt-bCf8JpiEMS57ILEjnG-IpW8fhJ6

This is the wings of Russia play list... they are not in order... there are 18 programmes...

Well I think a really big factor is going to be Checkmate and any MiG equivalent because they are being designed from the outset to be modern stealthy fighters with internal weapons bays that are 20 to 30 million to buy and probably 4-6K dollars per hour to operate... now if they design them properly so they can for instance effectively deliver dumb bombs with the precision of the gefest & T type navigation bombing system they would make excellent COIN type aircraft too and affordable to many up and coming countries.

It is pretty clear with the separation of Russia with the west that resource based wars are going to start happening more often because the west won't be able to keep its comfortable standard of living and also buy everything it needs.... so what to do with that enormous military the US has... use it or lose it I would expect... it will either cut costs but get used to earn its keep or it is going to be fund starved out of existance... I suspect the former... which means most countries are going to want lots of MANPADS and lots of ATGMs and other defence items that are small and mobile and portable and most importantly effective.

Many of the older aircraft have room for upgrades to keep them affordable but to also make them more effective... I mean four wing pylons added to a MiG-15 that each carry four Igla-S or Verba type MANPADS for use against enemy attack helicopters and light CAS aircraft or incoming cruise missiles or standoff weapons...

You have to look at the location as well too... Russia is not likely going to want to use MiG-15s for anything except target practise, but some little country in central or south America where the enemy has an F-5 or perhaps Super Tucano then an upgraded MiG-15 isn't a terrible choice and relatively simple and cheap to operate, which was one of the reasons it kept being used so long.

Aircraft are delivery platforms for weapons so as long as the weapons are good and effective and not too expensive then even an older aircraft can be useful in some roles.

As mentioned the Su-17/22 has a decent payload and can carry modern weapon types. It isn't amazingly fast and it isn't amazingly manouverable... for CAS the Su-25 is rather better even if only because it has two engines so it can often survive a MANPADS hit and get home...

The Soviets found the Su-25 to be significantly superior than the Fitter in the 1980s... the Frogfoot could get airborne from an airstrip a quarter of the length the Fitter needed, and while it was slower it was better able to find targets and hit them and its performance manouvering in the mountains was rather better too.

It is not a super manouverable plane of course in a fighter duel an A-10 would win most of the time but then using Vikhr missiles the Su-25 would probably never engage in a turning dogfight with an A-10 in the first place.

I honestly think the Su-25 is a much better design... the A-10 is just too big and its weapons capacity wont mean much in combat because very quickly a MANPAD hit will mean it is heading home anyway.

Interestingly the Ilyusion competition for the Su-25 was actually closer to the A-10 in size and capacity, but actually had a tail gunner with a twin 23mm cannon and wing mounted bomb bays.... but was rejected for the smaller lighter faster Su-25.

Apart from being free the previous generation of aircraft don't really offer anything the newer aircraft don't give with improvements.

The MiG-23 is a good interceptor and a reasonable fighter because of acceleration and systems, and the MiG-27 is a good strike aircraft with a very good gun and good air to ground payload capacity, but later members of the MiG-29 family combine reasonable interceptor capacity with good fighter capacity and light strike capacity too... all in one more modern cheaper to operate and maintain aircraft.

The new air to air weapons for the 29 are vastly superior to the MiG-23s and the air to ground ordinance is improved too, so as they wear out it simply makes sense to scrap the older planes and buy newer ones, with the new ones being fully multirole.

The only real exception would be MiG-25 and Mi-24 in my opinion but drones are taking over for recon in poor countries as well as rich ones because they are cheaper... and the Mi-24 offers something a bit unique as well, but might be more interesting to paramilitary forces like police units that want troops and weapons carried on missions, or for extraction or delivery missions of small groups in or out to remote locations... like up the side of a hill or the middle of a jungle or desert.

Although mig-15 was still flying, never scene any pics of the su-7 which was a bad aircraft anyway.

The Su-7 was an excellent aircraft for what it was.... it was small and light and cheap and handled very well... it just lacked range and payload... problems that were solved with swing wing modifications in the Su-17.

It is a sort of Jaguar type aircraft that is not really a fighter and more of a light strike aircraft.

Drag like that and it would handle like a dog though...

Well this thread is about old birds, but you did mention in the opening post that it could really include the use of anything old...

Came across this:

Source:

TECHNOLOGY
NPO Molniya will create a new hypersonic target-missile “Gvozdika”

15 November 2018

Клуб «Калашников»

Редакция
NPO Molniya will create a new hypersonic target-missile “Gvozdika”, which is intended for testing new air defense weapons.

“This is a rocket that will fly at an altitude of 10,000 meters with the possibility of maneuvering, in the mode of rounding the terrain. A fairly universal apparatus that will imitate the latest achievements of our potential adversaries, ”Olga Sokolova, General Director of NPO Molniya, told Kalashnikov Media in an interview.

The production of a new rocket is likely to begin in 2021.

And the photo...



Now correct me if I am mistaken but the look of the missile on the hoist and the missiles on the ground to the right with their fin configuration....

But I suspect the new hypersonic target missile is an SA-1.. S-25.



Those old missiles could have all their bits and pieces replaced with modern stuff that is lighter and more reliable and more compact and the warhead was quite large... at several hundred kgs intended to hit bombers or groups of bombers.

Improved rocket fuels would mean this supersonic missile could be rather faster and more potent today than it ever was before...

Or maybe the photo is disinformation...