Russia’s Su-25 Is Moscow’s Very Own ‘A-10’ Style Tank Killer

She might be old, but she can do the job. 

Kyle Mizokami [2]

Around the same time the U.S. Air Force was looking for a dedicated close air-support aircraft, a requirement that eventually fielded the A-10 Warthog, the Soviet Union was also embarking on a search for a fixed-wing tank killer. The result was the Sukhoi Su-25, known as “Frogfoot” in the West, a plane that flies for Russia and other ex-Soviet states to this day.

In the late 1960s both the U.S. Air Force and Soviet military realized that the pursuit of fast fighter jets was leaving a gap in fixed-wing close air support (CAS) for friendly forces. The Soviet Union had fielded the Ilyushin Il-2 “Sturmovik” fighter with great success over the eastern front in World War II, and a modern day replacement was desired. The USSR’s effort to build a CAS plane began in 1968, a year after the USAF began its own search.

The Su-25, whether by accident or design, bears a striking resemblance to the YA-9, Northrop’s contender for the A-X program. A high, broad-winged aircraft with twin conventionally placed engines, the Su-25 was like the A-10 in valuing protection and lethality over all other considerations. Maximum combat speed with one thousand pounds of bombs and a pair of air-to-air missiles was just 590 miles an hour. Similarly to the A-10, the Su-25 could take off and land from unimproved airfields, and included a parachute braking system to shorten the required landing strip length.

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