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

brought to you by Squarespace in 1967 the Soviet Union organized 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 Sue sevens and mig-21s they realized that this wasn't going to work and soon that they would need a dedicated attack aircraft their previous aircraft the initial intent 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 so you're 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 inbuilt email campaign marketing that's easy to use and their sites are already optimized 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 found and get 10 off your first site and domain back to the show good 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 mention exercise performed the close air support role far better than the supersonic aircraft they weren't too fast and Pilots had tied to aim properly and handle the aircraft easily and it's exactly this that two engineers at sirhoy 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 sahoy 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 ishulen yuccolev mccoyan and sahoi 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 mock-up and you can guess that when it came to the actual presentation when sohoi wheeled in their full-size mock-up into the auditorium the other paper projects were dismissed immediately though prototype was green lit and the game was on by 1975 the first prototype of the su-25 called the T8 at the time had its first flight and many more to follow it proved to be much Superior to its main competitor the ishelen 102 but the most interesting part here is that the test pilot who flew the su-25 Prototype was none other than Vladimir ishelen son of Sergey the founder of the ishulen bureau so talk about a betrayal close to the heart he would actually spend most of his career as a test pilot for sahoy and even tested Jets like the T4 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 [Music] 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 top 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 Thomas key r-95 sh 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 and 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 caliper weapons firing at the su-25 and one of them even featured dropping Warheads into a working engine to check the effects of a man pad 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 in 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-deficientary 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 A10 and its famous bird machine the su-25 only has double 30 millimeter Auto cabins below its nose however there is an option of mounting an additional two 23 millimeter Auto cannons 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 500 kilogram ones unguided and guided missiles and fuel tanks can be carried on these hardpoints along with r60 and r73 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 scratch scratch translated as Rook as the Russians court or as NATO calls it the Frog foot 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-sided 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 a 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 chechian wars during the 90s it saw combat during the iran-iraq War II 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 off this platform during the war because traditional attack aircraft in contested airspace is definitely not a good idea something that the U.S 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 had found and explained and if you haven't subscribed already click that subscribe button because we really 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Channel: Found And Explained

Views: 977,940

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Id: t6qlOg3niIc

Length: 11min 53sec (713 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 27 2023