Oddball
03-08-2005, 03:19 PM
Afghan Rhombus
Su-25 Frogfoot development and combat testing by Alexey Zakharov
Legend has it that the Rhombus Team came into being when Air Force Commander Pavel Kutakhov reported the results of new aircraft tests to the Minister of Defence, Dmitry Ustinov, in 1979. Talk turned to the Su-25 and and the Minister is said to have exclaimed: "Why should combat aircraft iron the skies over the Volga when there is an ideal testing ground with severe environmental and real combat conditions." The Afghan War had begun.
As a result, it was decided to send two Su-25s, the second prototype T8-1D and the pre-production T8-3, to Afghanistan for development flight trials. Before they left, Sukhoi specialists had to settle several problems. Of prime importance was the development of the T8-3's weapon control system but they had to remove the unecessary test and recording equipment from the T8-1D. A separate task was filling fuel tanks with polyurethane foam to prevent explosion if the aircraft was hit. External fuel tanks intended for the Rhombus team were also filled with polyurethane foam. The T8 was fitted with 176 Imp gal (800 lit) external fuel tanks which were standard for Sukhoi combat aircraft.
The electronic wiring intended for the weapon types which would not be used in the Afghan tests were capped and the appropriate cockpit switches disconnected.
The test programme was drawn up jointly by the Sukhoi Design Bureau and GNIKI VVS (Gosudarstvenny Nauchnoispytatelny Krasnoznamenny Institut VVS - State Research Test Institute of Soviet Air Force) whose T8 programme leader was Lt Col Oleg Mukhin. The commander of the Rhombus team was Maj Gen Vladimir Alferov, Deputy Chief of GNIKI VVS research. The team comprised specialists who had worked at the Sukhoi Design Bureau LIIDB at Zhukovsky and personnel from the Design Bureau affiliate in Akhtubinsk where the tests had been carried out. The departure of the Rhombus team to Afghanistan was scheduled for April 16, 1980.
The assembly point for the Rhombus team was Akhtubinsk. All the team members underwent a medical examination and were inoculated as required. Despite the fact that all the specialists were reserve officers, none had been called up for military service for various reasons. Nevertheless, all were given arms, Kalashnikov submachine guns and Makarov pistols, and underwent training on the shooting range prior to departure.
Two test pilots from the Sukhoi Design Bureau, Nikolay Sadovinkov and Anatoly Ivanov, were members of the Rhombus team plus two from the GNIKI VVS, Vyacheslav Soloviev and Valery Muzyka. Besides the personnel from the Sukhoi Design Bureau, the Rhombus team included nav/attack system specialists from the Arsenal Kiev Plant and an air data recorder specialist, Timofey Klimenko, who was to re-write, decode and analyse the flight recorder information. In total 46 civilian Su-25 'maintenance' specialists were in the team in addition to aerodynamicists, weapon control system engineers and bombing sight specialists. The Air Force was represented in the team of about 15 military engineers and up to 100 maintenance personnel.
The Command announced that although the team's main task was to undertake testing, if it should be necessary the Commander of the Air Division in Afghanistan could use the aircraft for combat missions. As planned, the first part of the team left for Afghanistan on April 16, 1980. The second part flew out with the T8 aircraft the next day, but departure was delayed due to bad weather along the route, which was Akhtubinsk - Krasnovodsk - Mary - Shindand. The group flew to Mary in a Yak-40 and from then on in an An-12 military transport which also carried ground equipment.
In Shindand the T8s were covered with camouflage nets and tents were set up for the team. Discarded external tanks were used for shower baths which were located near the aircraft apron and spare parts were brought in to repair a damaged pump in an idle artesian well. The Rhombus team did not face water supply problems and it became the envy of everybody else on the airfield when tankers watered the roads in the camp and the aircraft parking area, thus saving the people, equipment and aircraft from the sand and dust. The team was even supplied with food specially flown in from Akhtubinsk.
Being situated at an altitude of about 3,740 ft, Shindand airfield was notable for its distinctly continental climate. The day's heat of above 30 degrees gave way to night chills. In between there were a few hours of coolness that gave respite to tired men. The first indoctrination flight took place two days after arrival. The former pilot and Hero of the Soviet Union, Dmitry Smirnov, was a member of the Rhombus team. He was an experienced instructor who warned the young test pilots not to be carried away by the beauty of the surrounding mountains. The changing light conditions could make navigation difficult until the pilots became familiar with the terrain. However, the team was fortunate because the weather remained good with only occasional cloud cover during the 50-day stay in Afghanistan.
At first, the absence of a dedicated test range hampered the trials as it was very difficult to estimate the accuracy of bombing and firing in such conditions. A site was selected in an uninhabited area where groups of rocks could be clearly visible from the air. The pilots aimed at these rocks and the accuracy of their bombing and firing was checked with an aerial camera gun. Some of Rhombus's military specialists doubted the effectiveness of such assessments and decided to look for a test range. One of the team members had seen an area from the air when he had been approaching Shindand which he thought would be suitable and Air Division Command confirmed that their was an unused tank range 5.5 miles from the airfield.
Although Mujaheheen activity was not observed there, team members went to inspect the range in an armoured personnel carrier and with an escort.
The range helped speed up weapons testing but there were other test programmes to evaluate the capabilies of the radio altimeter, radio stations and a laser range finder in mountainous conditions. However, evolving methods of attacking ground targets in the mountains proved to be the most complicated part of the programme.
The aircraft had to break off an attack in valleys without turning away. Several training passes enabled the pilots to assess the capabilities of the Su-25 which easily pulled 5g - the turbojet engine provided the necessary thrust, in spite of the 'hot and high' conditions. The wing, with an aspect of ratio of 6.5 and a thickness-to-chord ratio of 10.5%, created sufficient lift which was increased with full span leading edge flaps, while the distinctive wingtip split air brakes aided manoeuvrability.
After only about a week's testing, the Air Division Commander asked if he could send one of the aircraft in to support land forces.The first combat use of the Su-25 turned out to be a severe trial for the military and even more so for its civil test pilots who were not particularly enthusiastic about accurate hits against live targets. There was an exception - after one bombing mission a deafening explosion was heard, far in excess of anything that could have been produced by the Su-25's entire weapons load. It was found out later that, a bomb had hit a Mujahedeen ammunition depot, which was greatly appreciated by Air Division Command.
The Su-25's most important mission was carried out in the first half of May, 1980. Land forces found a fortified region in a gorge 75 miles south of Shindand in the Farakh area. The region had been built up long before the Soviet troops arrived in Afghanistan and had most likely been created in case of invasion from Iran. Permanent weapon emplacements protected by boulders and covered by concrete were at every turn of the narrow canyon.
A bid to enter the Farakh gorge cost the infantry two armoured personnel carriers when they tripped mines. The Air Division Commander ordered the Su-25s into the gorge.
As they were relatively close to the target the aircraft flew without external fuel tanks so that all eight underwing pylons could carry weapons. They took off with a full combat load, one aircraft carried eight 1,100lb bombs and the other 32 220lb bombs on multiple bomb racks. The racks were borrowed from a neighbouring Su-17 unit since the Rhombus team did not have any.
All the Rhombus team was apprehensive when the Su-25s first took-off with a full combat load. The strip was 7,540 ft long and take-off was made during the high mid-day temperatures. the early version Su-17s based in Shindand lacked adequate power in the hot and high conditions. With each aircraft carrying two FAB-250 550lb high explosive bombs and two UB-32 rocket pods, the Su17s could not get airborne until almost at the end of the runway after which they made a sluggish climb out. The Su-25s lifted off approximately in the middle of the runway with a full load and, to the engineers' delight, climbed quickly.
The ground forces had witnessed the accuracy of the Su-25 attacks in previous sorties and were not afraid of 'their own bombs'. Other aircraft types were unable to descend as low when bombing the gorges, thus reducing their accuracy - consequently the ground forces were less than keen to call for air support. Bombs had already fallen close to friendly troops in Afghanistan.
The high manoeuvrability of the aircraft permitted the pilots to attack in confined spaces and their confidence in the sight's accuracy enabled them to destroy targets often masked by natural obstacles. Ground controllers learned to make the target coordinates more precise and their belief that the pilots would not miss gave rise to commands such as "the target is on the left slope 20 metres to the south of the group of four stones".
The specialists of GNIKI VVS examined the gorge in order to assess the results of the Su-25 bombing. They carried out an experiment there to determine the acoustic effect of explosions around the target. They used hand grenades equivalent to a 220lb bomb from the Mujahedeen's ammunition depot. They put the grenades together with a detonator behind a boulder, took shelter some considerable distance from the gorge and set off the explosion. The results were most impressive - all the 'experimenters' returned to their airfield almost deafened. During their 50 days in Afghanistan, the Su-25s carried out some 100 flying missions, including 40 combat sorties. Sixty-eight test flights had been planned for the trial programme.
The Su-25 flight tests had proved to be a success and were highly appreciated by the Ministry of Defence, General Staff and Main Air Force Headquarters. The activities of the Rhombus team greatly contributed to large-scale production of the Su-25 and its wide use in the Afghan War.
The first Su-25 combat unit, the 200th Independent Air Attack Squadron, was formed at Sital-tchay air base in Azerbaijan. On June 19, 1981, the squadron and its 12 aircraft arrived at Shindand air base. The Soviet military leaders had promised that the war would be resolved by a 'limited military contingent' but combat operations continued to escalate. Eventually, in 1984, it was decided to increase Soviet forces in Afghanistan and the Su-25 unit at Shindand was established comprising three squadrons of 12 aircraft, two at Bagram and one at Kandahar. The same year, Afghan guerrillas obtained Redeye portable surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) for the first time. The Russians counted 60 launched missiles in 1984 and 140 in 1985. An automatic device which launched flares at the beginning of an attack was devised to protect the Su-25 (formerly the pilot dispensed the flares manually and often forgot in the heat of battle) and the number of flares was also doubled from 128 to 256.
This simple solution worked well until Stinger SAMs entered the battlefield in 1986 which coincided with the number of SAM launches increasing abruptly to 600. This time there was no simple answer - the Stinger homing system was too accurate and the Su-25's thermal emission too great. The only possible solution was to improve the aircraft's survivability. This was achieved by redesigning the fire protection system, strengthening the control rods and most importantly, the engines were separated from the fuselage by two 5mm thick steel and glassfibre armour plates. The first modified Su-25s arrived in Afghanistan in August 1987.
The Su-25 was perfectly tailored to the needs of the Afghan War - easy to fly, effective in combat and with great survivability. During its time in Afghanistan the aircraft carried mainly free-falling bombs and unguided rockets, but it could also carry the AS-10 Karen and AS-14 Kedge laser-guided missiles. According to Sukhoi, of the 139 missiles launched by Su-25s since April 1986, 137 were direct hits. The aircraft's manoeuvrability was particularly useful when operating over Afghanistan's mountainous terrain. During the eight years of war Su-25s are believed to have clocked up 60,000 sorties - 23 aircraft were lost and eight pilots killed.
One aircraft suffered 80 to 90 combat hits and returned safely while 15 to 20 hits would have been sufficient to destroy an Su-17 Fitter which had less armour.
Air Forces Monthly, 1996
http://www.suchoj.com/ab1953/Su-25/images/Su-25_am%20Boden_zerstoert_in%20Afghanistan_25.jpg
Su-25 Frogfoot development and combat testing by Alexey Zakharov
Legend has it that the Rhombus Team came into being when Air Force Commander Pavel Kutakhov reported the results of new aircraft tests to the Minister of Defence, Dmitry Ustinov, in 1979. Talk turned to the Su-25 and and the Minister is said to have exclaimed: "Why should combat aircraft iron the skies over the Volga when there is an ideal testing ground with severe environmental and real combat conditions." The Afghan War had begun.
As a result, it was decided to send two Su-25s, the second prototype T8-1D and the pre-production T8-3, to Afghanistan for development flight trials. Before they left, Sukhoi specialists had to settle several problems. Of prime importance was the development of the T8-3's weapon control system but they had to remove the unecessary test and recording equipment from the T8-1D. A separate task was filling fuel tanks with polyurethane foam to prevent explosion if the aircraft was hit. External fuel tanks intended for the Rhombus team were also filled with polyurethane foam. The T8 was fitted with 176 Imp gal (800 lit) external fuel tanks which were standard for Sukhoi combat aircraft.
The electronic wiring intended for the weapon types which would not be used in the Afghan tests were capped and the appropriate cockpit switches disconnected.
The test programme was drawn up jointly by the Sukhoi Design Bureau and GNIKI VVS (Gosudarstvenny Nauchnoispytatelny Krasnoznamenny Institut VVS - State Research Test Institute of Soviet Air Force) whose T8 programme leader was Lt Col Oleg Mukhin. The commander of the Rhombus team was Maj Gen Vladimir Alferov, Deputy Chief of GNIKI VVS research. The team comprised specialists who had worked at the Sukhoi Design Bureau LIIDB at Zhukovsky and personnel from the Design Bureau affiliate in Akhtubinsk where the tests had been carried out. The departure of the Rhombus team to Afghanistan was scheduled for April 16, 1980.
The assembly point for the Rhombus team was Akhtubinsk. All the team members underwent a medical examination and were inoculated as required. Despite the fact that all the specialists were reserve officers, none had been called up for military service for various reasons. Nevertheless, all were given arms, Kalashnikov submachine guns and Makarov pistols, and underwent training on the shooting range prior to departure.
Two test pilots from the Sukhoi Design Bureau, Nikolay Sadovinkov and Anatoly Ivanov, were members of the Rhombus team plus two from the GNIKI VVS, Vyacheslav Soloviev and Valery Muzyka. Besides the personnel from the Sukhoi Design Bureau, the Rhombus team included nav/attack system specialists from the Arsenal Kiev Plant and an air data recorder specialist, Timofey Klimenko, who was to re-write, decode and analyse the flight recorder information. In total 46 civilian Su-25 'maintenance' specialists were in the team in addition to aerodynamicists, weapon control system engineers and bombing sight specialists. The Air Force was represented in the team of about 15 military engineers and up to 100 maintenance personnel.
The Command announced that although the team's main task was to undertake testing, if it should be necessary the Commander of the Air Division in Afghanistan could use the aircraft for combat missions. As planned, the first part of the team left for Afghanistan on April 16, 1980. The second part flew out with the T8 aircraft the next day, but departure was delayed due to bad weather along the route, which was Akhtubinsk - Krasnovodsk - Mary - Shindand. The group flew to Mary in a Yak-40 and from then on in an An-12 military transport which also carried ground equipment.
In Shindand the T8s were covered with camouflage nets and tents were set up for the team. Discarded external tanks were used for shower baths which were located near the aircraft apron and spare parts were brought in to repair a damaged pump in an idle artesian well. The Rhombus team did not face water supply problems and it became the envy of everybody else on the airfield when tankers watered the roads in the camp and the aircraft parking area, thus saving the people, equipment and aircraft from the sand and dust. The team was even supplied with food specially flown in from Akhtubinsk.
Being situated at an altitude of about 3,740 ft, Shindand airfield was notable for its distinctly continental climate. The day's heat of above 30 degrees gave way to night chills. In between there were a few hours of coolness that gave respite to tired men. The first indoctrination flight took place two days after arrival. The former pilot and Hero of the Soviet Union, Dmitry Smirnov, was a member of the Rhombus team. He was an experienced instructor who warned the young test pilots not to be carried away by the beauty of the surrounding mountains. The changing light conditions could make navigation difficult until the pilots became familiar with the terrain. However, the team was fortunate because the weather remained good with only occasional cloud cover during the 50-day stay in Afghanistan.
At first, the absence of a dedicated test range hampered the trials as it was very difficult to estimate the accuracy of bombing and firing in such conditions. A site was selected in an uninhabited area where groups of rocks could be clearly visible from the air. The pilots aimed at these rocks and the accuracy of their bombing and firing was checked with an aerial camera gun. Some of Rhombus's military specialists doubted the effectiveness of such assessments and decided to look for a test range. One of the team members had seen an area from the air when he had been approaching Shindand which he thought would be suitable and Air Division Command confirmed that their was an unused tank range 5.5 miles from the airfield.
Although Mujaheheen activity was not observed there, team members went to inspect the range in an armoured personnel carrier and with an escort.
The range helped speed up weapons testing but there were other test programmes to evaluate the capabilies of the radio altimeter, radio stations and a laser range finder in mountainous conditions. However, evolving methods of attacking ground targets in the mountains proved to be the most complicated part of the programme.
The aircraft had to break off an attack in valleys without turning away. Several training passes enabled the pilots to assess the capabilities of the Su-25 which easily pulled 5g - the turbojet engine provided the necessary thrust, in spite of the 'hot and high' conditions. The wing, with an aspect of ratio of 6.5 and a thickness-to-chord ratio of 10.5%, created sufficient lift which was increased with full span leading edge flaps, while the distinctive wingtip split air brakes aided manoeuvrability.
After only about a week's testing, the Air Division Commander asked if he could send one of the aircraft in to support land forces.The first combat use of the Su-25 turned out to be a severe trial for the military and even more so for its civil test pilots who were not particularly enthusiastic about accurate hits against live targets. There was an exception - after one bombing mission a deafening explosion was heard, far in excess of anything that could have been produced by the Su-25's entire weapons load. It was found out later that, a bomb had hit a Mujahedeen ammunition depot, which was greatly appreciated by Air Division Command.
The Su-25's most important mission was carried out in the first half of May, 1980. Land forces found a fortified region in a gorge 75 miles south of Shindand in the Farakh area. The region had been built up long before the Soviet troops arrived in Afghanistan and had most likely been created in case of invasion from Iran. Permanent weapon emplacements protected by boulders and covered by concrete were at every turn of the narrow canyon.
A bid to enter the Farakh gorge cost the infantry two armoured personnel carriers when they tripped mines. The Air Division Commander ordered the Su-25s into the gorge.
As they were relatively close to the target the aircraft flew without external fuel tanks so that all eight underwing pylons could carry weapons. They took off with a full combat load, one aircraft carried eight 1,100lb bombs and the other 32 220lb bombs on multiple bomb racks. The racks were borrowed from a neighbouring Su-17 unit since the Rhombus team did not have any.
All the Rhombus team was apprehensive when the Su-25s first took-off with a full combat load. The strip was 7,540 ft long and take-off was made during the high mid-day temperatures. the early version Su-17s based in Shindand lacked adequate power in the hot and high conditions. With each aircraft carrying two FAB-250 550lb high explosive bombs and two UB-32 rocket pods, the Su17s could not get airborne until almost at the end of the runway after which they made a sluggish climb out. The Su-25s lifted off approximately in the middle of the runway with a full load and, to the engineers' delight, climbed quickly.
The ground forces had witnessed the accuracy of the Su-25 attacks in previous sorties and were not afraid of 'their own bombs'. Other aircraft types were unable to descend as low when bombing the gorges, thus reducing their accuracy - consequently the ground forces were less than keen to call for air support. Bombs had already fallen close to friendly troops in Afghanistan.
The high manoeuvrability of the aircraft permitted the pilots to attack in confined spaces and their confidence in the sight's accuracy enabled them to destroy targets often masked by natural obstacles. Ground controllers learned to make the target coordinates more precise and their belief that the pilots would not miss gave rise to commands such as "the target is on the left slope 20 metres to the south of the group of four stones".
The specialists of GNIKI VVS examined the gorge in order to assess the results of the Su-25 bombing. They carried out an experiment there to determine the acoustic effect of explosions around the target. They used hand grenades equivalent to a 220lb bomb from the Mujahedeen's ammunition depot. They put the grenades together with a detonator behind a boulder, took shelter some considerable distance from the gorge and set off the explosion. The results were most impressive - all the 'experimenters' returned to their airfield almost deafened. During their 50 days in Afghanistan, the Su-25s carried out some 100 flying missions, including 40 combat sorties. Sixty-eight test flights had been planned for the trial programme.
The Su-25 flight tests had proved to be a success and were highly appreciated by the Ministry of Defence, General Staff and Main Air Force Headquarters. The activities of the Rhombus team greatly contributed to large-scale production of the Su-25 and its wide use in the Afghan War.
The first Su-25 combat unit, the 200th Independent Air Attack Squadron, was formed at Sital-tchay air base in Azerbaijan. On June 19, 1981, the squadron and its 12 aircraft arrived at Shindand air base. The Soviet military leaders had promised that the war would be resolved by a 'limited military contingent' but combat operations continued to escalate. Eventually, in 1984, it was decided to increase Soviet forces in Afghanistan and the Su-25 unit at Shindand was established comprising three squadrons of 12 aircraft, two at Bagram and one at Kandahar. The same year, Afghan guerrillas obtained Redeye portable surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) for the first time. The Russians counted 60 launched missiles in 1984 and 140 in 1985. An automatic device which launched flares at the beginning of an attack was devised to protect the Su-25 (formerly the pilot dispensed the flares manually and often forgot in the heat of battle) and the number of flares was also doubled from 128 to 256.
This simple solution worked well until Stinger SAMs entered the battlefield in 1986 which coincided with the number of SAM launches increasing abruptly to 600. This time there was no simple answer - the Stinger homing system was too accurate and the Su-25's thermal emission too great. The only possible solution was to improve the aircraft's survivability. This was achieved by redesigning the fire protection system, strengthening the control rods and most importantly, the engines were separated from the fuselage by two 5mm thick steel and glassfibre armour plates. The first modified Su-25s arrived in Afghanistan in August 1987.
The Su-25 was perfectly tailored to the needs of the Afghan War - easy to fly, effective in combat and with great survivability. During its time in Afghanistan the aircraft carried mainly free-falling bombs and unguided rockets, but it could also carry the AS-10 Karen and AS-14 Kedge laser-guided missiles. According to Sukhoi, of the 139 missiles launched by Su-25s since April 1986, 137 were direct hits. The aircraft's manoeuvrability was particularly useful when operating over Afghanistan's mountainous terrain. During the eight years of war Su-25s are believed to have clocked up 60,000 sorties - 23 aircraft were lost and eight pilots killed.
One aircraft suffered 80 to 90 combat hits and returned safely while 15 to 20 hits would have been sufficient to destroy an Su-17 Fitter which had less armour.
Air Forces Monthly, 1996
http://www.suchoj.com/ab1953/Su-25/images/Su-25_am%20Boden_zerstoert_in%20Afghanistan_25.jpg