I don’t agree. If you’re going to fight against even the most poorly equiped enemies you need to keep your expensive new (or expensively upgraded) aircraft well outside the range of (at the very least) short ranged SAMs. Try doing this with rockets and you’ll either hit nothing or you will get killed. In Georgia, Russian Frogfoots used unguided rockets en masse. Sure they inflicted terror casualties but they did very little real damage when they had the perfect opportunity to. Ok, so it didn’t affect the outcome of that particular war but it might for the next one.

The Su-25 is a CAS aircraft. You understand what CAS is right? It will make little difference for short range SAM avoidance if the Su-25 / A-10 use rockets or short range A2G guided missiles.

Unless there is a repeat of the Georgian conflict (before which, I’m sure people were saying “oh, there’s no way Russian AF Frogfoots are going to be attacking armoured columns these days, they’re just there to scare a few terrorists back into the woods”).

Its unimpressive. Even for light-scale counter insurgency, the Russian AF needs to be able to hit pin-point targets in all weather, day and night, from reasonable stand-off distances. WWII tactics and weapons don’t cut it anymore.

The RuAF can hit plenty of things with high accuracy at stand-off ranges. The Kh-31/58/59 variants speak for this. Not even including the Kh-555/101.

You gents didn’t expect Lockheed and Sukhoi to reinvent the wheel… did you?

Trust me, you don’t want to see Pacific Fleet 956s. Even in the pic above, one of the Sovs needs some engine repairs to be truly deploy-able. Overall shape is much better than some of the Pacific 956s though. They are in a deplorable state, aside from Bystry, which is very much active. Boyevoi is dying, Bezboyazennyi is right next to, and not doing much better, waiting for repairs. Burny might be repaired by 2013.

Baltic Fleet has Nastoichivy and Bespokoiny, the latter needs engine change, but at least its not rusting half assembled like the Pacific Fleet ships.

North has Rastoropnyi, under repairs that are barely moving. Admiral Ushakov is active, and the Gremyshii is moored “in reserve”, though it seems to me its been stricken from the fleet list. Supposedly was going to be dry docked in 2010, but never happened.

All in all. Not good.

All I have of Boyevoy; 2006.

Bezboyaznenniy; 2005.

Burniy; 2009.

Cheers ^^
I thought they would’ve gone for 3D instead of 2D flat.

I wonder if J-20 will conform to this standard as well..

It had been said that the design is more like “2.5D” nozzles – unless this has been dropped/disregarded.

You can’t really miniaturize a BrahMos lol.. or hell.. even a Klub for that matter.

Be satisfied that the PAK-FA will be able to carry the Kh-58UShK and R-37 variants 🙂

On the other hand it may be good for dash-fire-run missions with externally hung Brahmos or Klub missiles.

Photos of Severodvisnk.

http://img803.imageshack.us/img803/7143/34741384.jpg
http://img268.imageshack.us/img268/6928/35322393.jpg
http://img155.imageshack.us/img155/2479/90755031.jpg

It didn’t sink yet? Wow! Those defensetalk forum guys sure aren’t as good at predicting this kind of stuff as they thought it seems! :o:D

On a random note, no more Kh-15 in RuAF inventory, all existing stocks expired. 🙁

Perhaps secret replacement is there? 🙂 How is the production line?

Currently Tu-22M3 are being armed with Kh-32 hopefully; but the Tu-160 loses anti-ship capability with radar-homing weapons for now I guess?

When did the Soviet AF/RuAF use KAB-L from Su-24?

Laser guided missiles and bombs were always in inventory. They were the first PGMs used by the USSR in fact. TV/IR weapons came later.