Sh-90, the SU-25's would be successor

<<< As early as 1980, a successor to the Su-25 ‘Frogfoot’ was under design at Sukhoi, code-named Sh-90 (for “Shturmovik for the 1990s”) and bearing the bureau designation T-12. Featuring an unusual configuration employing twin forward fuselages housing separate cockpits, the design included a forward-swept wing and V-tail. The left-side forward fuselage was to provide the pilot’s station and carry the radar sensors in the nose, whereas the other forward-fuselage was to accommodate the weapons operator and an electro-optical fire-control system.

The unusual looking Sh-90 (“Shturmovik for the nineties”) subsonic, armored attack aircraft was conceived with twin forward fuselages, forward-swept wings and a V-shaped tail.

The design called for a maximum takeoff weight of 20 tonnes, and the type was to be powered by one or two non-afterburning engines developing 100 kN of thrust. All weapons were to be carried in two large bays inside the fuse lages instead of on wing-mounted or fuselage-mounted pylons. The aircraft would have been approximately 52.5 feet (16 m) long, with a wingspan of 64 feet (19.5 m). Reports suggest that work on the Sh 90 was progressing seriously and that a production line was planned at Irkutsk. However, aspirations for the aircraft were dashed by the developments that overtook Russia in the early 1990s. >>>

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What a strange looking aircraft! Oddness aside, I think it would have proven effective in it’s role, never has a dedicated CAS plane had a dedicated WSO or such an appearantly complete sensor suite. It was almost certain be be supersonic, given that even the old SU-25 can just edge past Mach 1 in a clean state, with a fraction of the thrust the Sh-90 would have had.

It definately looks to me as if it was designed with reduced observables in mind and that the short field capabability would have been pretty wicked. What I’m wondering is what was planned to are this mutant attack plane, particularily in regards to the cannon {if any}. Russia was known to have a 45mm autocannon under developement but that seems to have fallen by the wayside just as the Sh-90 aircraft itself.