The A-10 Warthog VERSUS The Su-25 Frogfoot

when it comes to wartime dominance in the skies there can only be one but when it comes to ubiquitous Man attack aircraft of the 21st century the title of best in the world is very much in dispute offered up by the United States as an Innovative close air support aircraft the Fairchild Republic A1 Thunderbolt better known as the war toog has been kicking ass in midair since the 70s but on the other side of the world the Soviet designed suoy su2 gr better known as the frogo has been in service for nearly as long and it's proven itself to be an absolute Master of the same craft where the lays claim to Greatness in today's episode of Mega projects we're going to try something a little bit new this is something that we're calling Mega projects matchups where we're going to pit the war toog and the Frog foot against each other and try and settle a simple question which aircraft reign supreme if You' like to find out of course settle in and if you'd like to see more of these Mega projects matchups in the future then let us know in the comments below let us know what you'd like to see and uh well maybe we make them won't [Music] [Music] we all right so the first of our two fighters today is the A10 an American war plane built by the Fairchild Republic subsidiary of global defense Corporation northr grimond built to be what is essentially a platform to carry heavy ordinance the is distinguished not just by Firepower but byas unbelievable levels of survivability while under attack and though its production line has been close since 1984 nearly 300 of the planes are still in service in the US Air Force and subordinate branches of the American Military uh cross the battlefield we've got the Soviet era su2 developed by the famed SEO design Bureau in Moscow at the height of the Cold War made to beat Nimble heavily armed and an absolute menace to the ground forces opposing it the su2 is a purpose-built instrument intended to turn the ti of Frontline battles wherever they crop up initially introduced in the early 1980s the Frog foot continued to be built through the 2010s and the nation of Georgia still retains the ability to make more now we've already done a deep dive on the A10 and its own dedicated video on this channel and so too for the Su 25 so for both aircraft and so we're going to focus on the details that are especially relevant to weigh them against each other specifically their specifications their weapon systems and their capabilities in battle and to do this let's start off with the A10 now the war toog sits at a length of 53 4 in or just over 16 M with a Wings span of 57 1/2 ft that's 17 1/2 M and an empty weight of 14 1/2 tons it can carry nearly double its own weight 252 tons including Fuel and Munitions and it hits a top speed of about 420 mph or 700 km per hour at a little over half the speed of sound just for we continue with today's video I want to share something with you meet holzkern a brand that is unique now if you're if you're an 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hollar.com mea projects and explore the magical world of holken and now back to today's video more importance it can loiter over the battlefield at speeds as low as 150 mph the war toog boasts a combat range of 250 M 460 km with with 10 minutes spent in combat a service ceiling of 45,000 ft or 13,700 M and it flies with a crew of one who tased with not only flying their plane but also riging death down on the enemy in terms of what the war can carry Munitions wise it's probably a better question to ask well what can't it carry fitted with 11 pylons including three under the fuselage and eight on the wings the plane can carry up to 10 Maverick air to surface missiles using High penetration warheads and infrared guidance systems to fire over 45 km it can also carry two Sidewinder airto a short range missiles or up to six rocket pods although it's actual rocket payload maxes out when it carries four bigger rocket pods with a total of 76 Rockets per plane in that Arrangement it can carry Mark 80 gravity bombs Mark 77 incend bombs various kinds of cluster bombs Paveway series laser guided bombs GPS guided bombs or Precision cluster bombs using locked Martin's wind corrected Munitions dispenser so it could carry a lot and all of this is to say nothing of the a10's most famous Weapon It's Avenger rotary Cannon and the corresponding 1,174 rounds that it can fire when fully loaded and then there's all the plan's other bells and whistles its avionics includes specialized targeting pods and electronic counter measures to prevent it from being locked onto and the plane has the option to carry flares chaff and extra fuel tanks to extend its range its bit is insulated by all round armor including a so-called bathtub structure of titanium up to about 4 cm thick its bubble canopy is bulletproof and built to give all round vision and the pilot is granted a heads up targeting display inertial navigation and a Tactical Air navigation system plus embedded GPS and a Terrain mapping system the A10 features night vision goggles and its powerful twin engines mounted high on the fuselage are designed so that even if one engine is rendered inoperable the plane can continue flying in practice it's orbit indestructible able to withstands major damage to its tail and wings and it's equipped with double redundant flight systems further it's built to take off on really short runways and while it sacrifices agility and speed to do its job it's excellent as an endurance weapon to be used under Fire and now of course let's talk about the su2 the Frog foot is a 1 seater aircraft built at a length of 47 1/2 ft that's 14 1/2 M and A Wings bad of about 51 ft sitting mty it weighs just under 11 tons although it can fill to a Max takeoff weight to very nearly double that at 21 and a/4 tons the Frog foot hits a maximum speed of 66 mph 975 km an hour and its stall speed although not publicized is likely comparable to that of the A10 if not lower due to its wing design and relatively lightweight it's got a combat range of 470 Mi 750 km and a low service ceiling at just 23,000 ft or 7,000 m in terms of armament the Su 25 is equipped with 11 hardpoints capable of carrying several different kinds of air to ground missiles or a smaller number of airto a missiles on the outer Wing pylons alternatively the SD 25 can carry numerous rocket pots for both guided and unguided ordinance or it can carry laser guided bombs incendiary bombs or cluster bombs depending on the needs of an individual Mission it's equipped with a twin barrel autoc Cannon capable of carrying 250 rounds and it can integrate two additional gun pods carrying 260 rounds each like the A10 the Frog foot encases its pilot in a bathtub style titanium alloy shell as well as having an armored windscreen the plane features a heads up display an integrated navigation and targeting system made Laser Rangefinder and Target designator a radar jammer and a radar warning receiver the frogot has the capacity to deploy chaff and flares for its own protection and it's outfitted with air navigation system Friend or Foe identifiers and the option to carry up to four external fuel tanks it's built to operate on very short runways in AER environments and it's got a reputation for durability Under Fire recently seen shrugging off hard hits during service on both sides of the air war in Ukraine now based off these attributes we can doll out a few advantages in a few areas the A1 Takes the Cake on durability at least in theory due to its ability to keep fighting with a full engine loss and it's built in system redundancies on the other hand the su2 smaller size its wing design the placement of its engines and its lower weight make it more maneuverable and Nimble in combat environments the su2 claims a decisive speed advantage and has a better functional range while the A10 has a higher service ceiling and a marginally superior ability to carry ordinance the actual weapons it carries are more advanced and its autoc Cannon is much better while also carrying over triple the number of rounds but where the A10 really comes away is in its avionics granting its pilot a far better situational awareness in contested [Music] airspace but look we can't get a full view of either aircraft by just accounting for their specs on paper instead we've got to view them in cont context where both the and the Frog fooot have proven themselves to be Assets in combat environments after a brief non-combat experience over the Skies of Granada in 1983 the A10 first saw combat during Operation Desert Storm where the plane was responsible for 900 tank kills 1,200 destroyed artillery pieces and 2,000 other destroyed military vehicles 132 of the planes were deployed giving an average of over 30 targets destroyed per plane even before we account for stationary targets like bunkers or Supply deos a10s also claimed to helicopters during their time over Iraq both using their cannons although four of the planes were shot down and 13 others sustained significant combat damage the planes flew 8,100 sorties during the operation more than paying back their limited losses though we do have to note that the attrition rate of the war toog was worrying enough that for most of the conflict it was restricted in its combat range to within 20 mi of the Iraqi border the A10 also saw limited use in Bosnia and herena in the mid 1990s attacking Bosnian Serb artillery and they returned to Kosovo to carry out ground attack attack and close air support missions during operation Iraqi Freedom a fought hundreds of thousands of rounds of ammunition and maintained a mission capable rate of 85% although 1 a0 was down during the operation later in the war between 2009 and 2012 ATN flew an average of around 30,000 sties a year and from 2006 to 2013 they were responsible for nearly 20% of close air support missions in the conflict they sought limited action in Libya before turning to carry out large scale attacks against Islamic State positions in Iraq and Syria during all these sorties the A10 has emerged to fight another day with the last confirmed loss of an A10 coming in 2003 when a pilot was shot down by an Iraqi surface to air missile on the other hand it's also important to recognize the US Air Force's own approach towards its aging attack plane which has been on the budgetary chopping block for the better part of a decade although the US Congress has been adamant about keeping the war toog in service the Air Force has nonetheless slashed its maintenance budget and done the very best to phase it out expressing concern concerned with its ability to survive in heavily contested airspace it's important to take into account exactly what that means here after all the A10 is just fine when it's performing counterinsurgency operations or fighting in areas where the United States's other combat aircraft have established their superiority instead the Air Force's concerns reflect the problem that all close a support planes including the su2 frogfoot would face in such an environment specifically but they're really no good in the dog fight and are badly outmatched in air-to-air capabilities by I her aircraft and that the more advanced air defense systems around the world can deal with them pretty easily speaking of the frogfoot the su2 began its own service life during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980s where the plane proved to be a highly effective weapon against the local majah hadine fenders according to S the su2 performed 60,000 sorties in Afghanistan including an average of 360 sorties per year per aircraft during the 8-year War at least 21 of the aircraft were lost although a number of them would were destroyed on the ground rather than in the air the s25 proved more than capable of dealing with tactical conditions in its battles against the majah deine and although it was unable to truly shift the balance of power in the war it created no problems for its Soviet handlers around the same time su-25s performed up to 15 sorties per day each during the Iran Iraq war in service with the Iraqi Air Force with a total of 900 sorties during the war only one su2 was lost due to Iranian fire and it was the Lynch to counterattacks that allowed Iraq to finish the war on terms of a stalemate rather than a territorial loss now the question at hand in this video su2 versus A10 could have been conclusively settled during the Gulf War but unfortunately for the frogfoot most Iraqi planes were destroyed on the runway during the start of the Coalition air campaign while a few others fled to Iran two of the Frog foots tried to back up a pair of mig21 fighter jets and get the jump on a pair of f-15c eagles but that went extremely poorly and concluded the Frog foot's role in the air war with two air to- air losses and zero kills they got significantly more use during the various post-soviet conflicts of the 1990s distinguishing themselves during the aasian war and both Chetan Wars where they were a favorite of Russian forces and flew tens of thousands of salties they sought service in Ethiopia Macedonia darur and on the Ivory Coast and Iran used two of the planes to take down a US predator drone in 2012 Russia has used the Frog for on mass in Georgia in 2008 in its lowra war in the dbass region of Ukraine and in its military interventions in Iraq and Syria as well as flying over 3,500 sorties against the Islamic State they've showed up again in service to Armenia during the negoro carabat war of 2020 and during its service in Ukraine the Frog foot has shown up in service to both the Russian and Ukrainian Air Forces although both sides have largely avoided manned air-to-air battles in the last year or so so when comparing the combat performance of these two planes it's important to note that the available data biasses the results in a couple of different ways on the one hand the Su 25 has seen a lot more service it's performed a lot more sorties and thus it's destroyed a whole lot more enemy targets than the A10 has and Although statistics on its performance are incomplete it certainly leads the A10 in terms of sheer number of kills that being said the su2 has also been shot down many more times than the A10 although it's important to consider that the su2 has been involved in significantly more battles in content Ed airspace that is to say inent to deal with many more enemy planes and weapon systems that were able and willing to shoot it down while the a10's deployments have seen it largely opposite disorganized or underere equipped forces that have no real hope of touching it in the skies once we screen these biases out as best we can we're left with a few key conclusions the s25 has proven itself capable of running a whole lot of sorties with an individual plane in short spans of time enduring damage and returning to the air with no real maintenance on the other hand the has proven its Edge in being able to take more punishment especially from ground forces not only can It endure more per plane but fewer planes have been lost per sorty this is even after accounting for the more harsh combat environments of the Su 25 and after acknowledging that the number of lost Su 25s we have is probably an undercount however we still can't overstate the importance of the a10's combat operations being in uncontested airspace while the su2 frequently deals with the const threat of an enemy Air Force whose power matches or exceeds its [Music] own now it's important we recognize here in mega projects that we don't have Monopoly on questions comparing the Aden and the su2 although it's squarely in the realm of the hypothetical the question is critically important for militaries that employ either aircraft and while they're generally incentivized to keep their conclusions to themselves they sometimes see fit to share indicators here and there about just how valuable each aircraft is relative to the other a first and rather recent clue comes out of Ukraine amidst discussions in 2022 over what aircraft is most appropriate for the United States to provide to ukrainians for their ongoing air defense against Russia although the A10 has been a favorite suggestion from both US military analysts and commenters on our sister Channel Warrior Graphics the Ukrainian military has categorically declined the A10 as a weapons offering at least until more appropriate craft like the F-16 fighter jet arrived at the conflict there are a few key reasons for this the A10 lacks any ability to deal with Russian surfac to aair missiles it can't defend against Russian Fighters and it's a plane that might be useful to have today but it won't be helpful in a few years or even a decade or two most important for our purposes though Ukraine believes that the A10 offers no real Combat advantages over its existing Fleet of su 25s although Ukrainian military adviser Yuri sack acknowledged the atn's ability to destroy ground targets and the greater sophistication of the the ordinance it usually carries compared to the Frog foot Sak has explained that the at0 offers no strategic or tactical improvements over the frogfoot in practice at least not in Ukraine we're also able to confront the issue at least somewhat that comes from the A10 having seen much less adversity in combat than the s25 has when asked about the atn's vulnerability against surface toar weapons compared to the su2 researcher Justin Bron explained a Business Insider that neither aircraft can detect incoming Rockets fired from man pad weapons or the shoulder fired heat seeking missile that have become a Hallmark of 21st century combat the a10s have ther armor and their exhaust system gives off less of a heat signature but manpad weapons are just as much a danger for the as the Frog foot and some private sector experts have taken on W toog versus frog fooot questions directly in one analysis warri mavens Chris osbor points out that the a10's durability and system redundancies clear advantages over the su2 in another Aviation writer Dar o Leon if the aviation geek club sites an expert on Russian Aviation quoted via who pointed out that the Su 25's higher Cruise speed abilities to take off on just about any type of Runway and ability to run on almost any fuel type make it a much more utilitarian tool on the other hand the a1's ability to refuel in midair was explained as being far less important while the atn's heavy gun has proven less effective in practice than the lighter su2 Cannon the A10 can carry far heavier ordinance while the s25 actually features heavier titanium plating to protect the pilot according to expert Dean shabanov finally defense commented Charlie GW of the national interest explains that the su2 has largely been upgraded to Modern Standard at least in service to militaries like Russia that have the option to do so the su2 is more biased toward so-called fire and forget weapons like laser guided weaponry and unguided bombs while the A10 is built for Pilots to focus on the operation of its forward cannons and electrooptical [Music] weapons with all of that being said it's finally time to dig in the question question at hand which aircraft is better we're going to answer in two parts first in a direct head-to-head confrontation and then in terms of mission capacity which plane is better in a fight and most importantly which plane is better at its job so when it comes to a direct air-to-air fight between these two planes we're not going to mince words more times than not the Frog foot should come home victorious in terms of airto a armament both planes would generally fly with a load out of two air-to-air missiles The Sidewinder for the a and a few options for the Su 25 including the K13 which is just a reverse engineered Sidewinder while the A10 has better jaming counter measures to ensure that it's not locked onto both planes are equipped with flares and shaft that can deal with each other's air-to-air missiles and once this turns into a dog fight the Su 25 holds all the cards it's more maneuverable it turns far better it's quicker by a wide margin and while the A10 Cannon is Iconic it also impacts the a10's flight in ways that the s25 can exploit after that it's up to the a1's durability but while there's a chance the plane and its pilot may not be brought down durability is no good for a Counterattack especially if say the loss of an engine further inhibits the plane's Mobility long story short if an A10 pilot and an su2 pilot really decide to brawl the frogfoot is the one that's walking away but luckily for fans of the A10 that isn't really the question that matters as long as both plans are working with competent militaries the frogfoot and the should either not be coming into contact at all or if they do they should both be focused on destroying ground forces and evading fighter planes rather than beefing with each other in their shared Mission role the A10 has some undeniable advantages over the Su 25 it can use heavier weapons to do more damage on the grounds and it can endure more damage from Small Arms fire than the su2 can and it's avionic Suite still outpaces the frogfoot even after the Su 25's upgrades and when that iconic Cannon is working it is an undeniably effective tool against enemy imp placements on the ground that means that the A10 can do more damage per plane and has a better chance of returning to base and even though the A10 probably isn't going to still be flying after a direct man pad hit or an attack from a more sophisticated fighter plane well neither's the Frog foot but even still the Frog foot offers material advantages that cannot be ignored its maneuverability is good for far more than just dog fights giving it the ability to evade enemy fire and attack from different vectors while its speed range ease of takeoff and short turnaround between sorties mean that it can get to the fight quicker stay there for longer and deliver more ordinance over multiple trips than the A10 could do in one its airframe is less durable overall but on balance an Su 25 pilot is likely safer in the cockpit than an A10 pilot due to the amount of overall armoring across the airframe get it with the same man pad and s25 Pilots are generally able to eject and survive while there's simply no real world examples on how an A10 pilot would fair when it comes to the ultimate question of mission role the winner really does depends on what you're looking for if your metric for success is a plane that can deliver massive hits endure whatever comes back and scare the living crap out of an enemy on the ground the A10 war toog is the first and really the only choice but if you're a pragmatist looking for tactical utility the su2 is very very hard to look away from the advantages the su2 offers over the A10 are advantages that other American planes like the f-15e the F16 and F35 also provide but the A10 doesn't if we're taking both the su2 and the A10 for a mission role they share the award for most impressive sorty is probably going to go to the A10 but one sorty doesn't win a war and if you're looking for the close air support plane that's the best long-term asset you can find then you're looking for an su2 1 nil frogurt all

Channel: Megaprojects

Views: 166,743

Keywords: a-10 warthog vs su-25, su-25 frogfoot, a-10 warthog, a-10 vs su-25, a10 vs su25, a10 vs su 25, su-25 vs a10 thunderbolt, su-25, close air support, su25, a-10, su 25

Id: a4wOer4UIhA

Length: 23min 7sec (1387 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 18 2023