Russia's Invincible Jet... The Bulletproof Su-25 Frogfoot

Brought to you by Squarespace. In 1967, the Soviet Union organised the largest military exercise the world had ever seen to that day. With over 180,000 troops and hundreds of aircraft participating. However, the role of a close air support aircraft, essential for then modern infantry tactics, fell down to fighters. This was a big and embarrassing problem for the superpower. A year later, the Soviets released a report calling for a new attack aircraft to fill in that gap. It would be called the Su-25. After developing nuclear weaponry, military doctrine in the Soviet Union started to change. Attack aircraft were not needed anymore. It was all about the speed and having a fleet of bombers carrying weapons to end the world. However, very soon they would understand that this doesn't work if there's a conventional war, one without the use of these nuclear weapons. After the large-scale exercises in Ukraine in 1967, where the role of close air support was performed by Su-7s and MiG-21s, they realised that this wasn't going to work and soon that they would need a dedicated attack aircraft. Their previous aircraft, the Ishilin-10s, were already obsolete. So Soviet engineers got to work designing the future of close air support. The Soviets were so caught up in trying to develop a ground attack fighter that they never really considered that it would have been far easier and cheaper just to tell the world how great they were with a Squarespace website. That's right, sell your jet or your Soviet empire or anything else with a Squarespace website. They have plenty of great templates or you can have a go building your own design with their powerful code-free builder. They also have e-commerce tech built into their platform to start adding products and sell straight away. They also have in-built email campaign marketing that's easy to use and their sites are already optimised for mobile phones. Plus, when you click that link, you're actually supporting me and the others that work on this channel by helping fund the animations and do the videos that you love so much. So just click that link and it's a win-win. Simply go to www.squarespace.com and get 10% off your first site and domain. Back to the show. Unlike the other jets of the era influenced by the whole supersonic hysteria, this new aircraft was to be subsonic. MiG-17s, which had also participated in the previous mentioned exercise, performed the close air support role far better than the supersonic aircraft. They weren't too fast and pilots had time to aim properly and handle the aircraft easily. And it's exactly this that two engineers at Sohoi took notice and started developing new design ideas in their spare time. Instead of trying to hedgehog their way through the bureaucracy of the Soviet Union, they decided to make the idea themselves and then use the help of young engineers and students to have together a complete proposal and only then propose it to Sohoi himself. And that's exactly what they did. Sohoi was surprised and interested in the idea and quickly it was forwarded to the commander of the Soviet Air Force and his higher-ups. This spurred enough interest in the ministry that they decided to put together a new design competition for this attack aircraft. Ishulin, Yakalev, Mikoyan and Sohoi were to participate. But thanks to the audacity of these engineers, they had an ace up their sleeve. Because they had already developed the design itself, they moved on to the next phase of tunnel testing and built a full-size mockup. You can guess that when it came to the actual presentation, when Sohoi wheeled in their full-size mockup into the auditorium, the other paper projects were dismissed immediately. The prototype was greenlit and the game was on. By 1975, the first prototype of the Su-25, called the T-8 at the time, had its first flight and many more to follow. It proved to be much superior to its main competitor, the Ishulin-102, but the most interesting part here is that the test pilot who flew the Su-25 prototype was none other than Vladimir Ishulin, son of Sergei, the founder of the Ishulin Bureau. So talk about a betrayal close to the heart. He would actually spend most of his career as a test pilot for Sohoi and even tested jets like the T-4, a story about which you can check out right here on the channel. But what about the design of the Su-25 that made it so darn special? This jet has a traditional aerodynamical design with shoulder-mounted wings. There's nothing too interesting on the surface, but it's what's under the hood that actually makes the difference. Often described as the flying tank, the Su-25 is one of the most armored aircraft even flying to this day. The cockpit is inside the titanium tub with an additional thick steel head protection. Furthermore, the underside is additionally protected with plates on the front landing gear doors. To push all this weight around, the aircraft would have two Tomoski R-95SH engines, providing the Su-25 with a maximum speed of 975 kilometers per hour. These two engines are actually separated on the fuselage and made to work completely autonomously. So in case one is damaged or destroyed, the pilot actually has control over the aircraft and can still land safely, which has often been the case throughout the years and the latest being in the war in Ukraine. One of the engines had an additional titanium plates. And if you're asking, why only one? Well, the answer is rather simple. It would be too heavy to add armor to both of the engines. So if the armored one gets hit, it will survive. And if the other one gets hit, well, we still have the other engine working anyway. Soviet practicality at its finest. During the development phase, hundreds of tests were made with different caliber weapons firing at the Su-25. And one of them even featured dropping warheads into a working engine to check the effects of a manpad hit in flight. With all the fuel tanks filled with a sponge-like material to prevent fire being spread easily if the plane is hit and also stop fuel from leaking, this jet seriously has redundancy up its exhaust pipe. And speaking of fuel, one of the craziest things about this aircraft is that it can run on diesel. The Soviets really wanted an aircraft that could be used anywhere at any time. And during the development phase, the main requirements were that this jet be able to take off and land from almost any flat patch of surface, be it a road, a runway, or a field. Additionally, it also had to be made out of non-deficient airy materials, easy to control and suitable for pilots with less skill and obviously very easy to repair. It's basically an AK-47 with wings. The tip of both the wingtips also house air brakes, which help the pilot decrease the speed during an attack run and to land on a very short runway. But this jet is not all just armor. There's also firepower. Unlike the equivalent A-10 and its famous brr machine, the Su-25 only has double 30mm autocannons below its nose. However, there is an option of mounting an additional two 23mm autocannons on both wings, which would total to a pretty insane amount of lead being sent down the range. In total, there are 10 hardpoints for different kinds of weaponry, five on each wing with a total ordnance capacity of 4.4 tons. A variety of bombs from 100 to 500kg ones, unguided and guided missiles and fuel tanks can be carried on these hardpoints, along with R-60 and R-73 missiles, giving this plane at least a chance in air-to-air combat. So what did the Russians even end up calling this colossal killing machine? It was given the name Grach. Grach, translated as Rook as the Russian's court, or as NATO calls it, the Frogfoot, comes in two base variants, a single-seater and twin-seater with UB designation made for training. However, in the late 80s, an interesting variant called the Su-25T and TM were developed. This aircraft was based on a two-seater design, but one pilot behind controls and was specialized in tank hunting. New optical systems and new missiles were tested by the end of the Afghanistan war with great success. The pilot only had to designate the target and the onboard systems would track the target while moving and the missile could be fired and forgotten. Apart from that, the TM variant, also sometimes called the Su-39, could carry TV and laser guided missiles and guided bombs. This promising upgrade never came to life, however, and stayed in limited experimental phase. Because the new Russian air force deemed it too sophisticated and expensive and opted for a Su-25SM modernization down the line. After entering service in the USSR, it was used extensively during the Afghanistan war and then used in the Chechen wars during the 90s. It saw combat during the Iran-Iraq war too, with Iraqis flying numerous sorties daily. In Europe, it was also used during insurgency in Macedonia and of course during the current war in Ukraine on both Ukrainian and Russian sides. It proved time and time again to be quite versatile and forgiving for the pilots saving their lives on numerous occasions because of its rugged design. On the other hand, with weaponry being pretty outdated for the modern era of fighting, both Ukrainian and Russian air forces have suffered heavy losses of this platform during the war. Because traditional attack aircraft in contested airspace is definitely not a good idea. Something that the US Air Force learned during the Gulf War with their significant A-10 losses in the starting phase. With production lines being closed in Russia in 2017, a question arises, is there even a future for the Su-25? Perhaps there will be another deep modification like the Su-39 or a change in doctrine and weaponry. Whatever happens, we can be sure that it will stay in service for at least some time just like its brother from the US, the A-10. Let me know your opinion down below and what you would like to see next here on the channel at Found and Explained. And if you haven't subscribed already, click that subscribe button because we really need some more people to boost us up to that goal of 1 million subscribers. See you next time!