There is no such thing as radar guided air to ground mode, except for antiships. A2G radar modes are primarily used for navigation, search, scan, surveillance, and tracking of ground targets, target affirmation, prior to an attack using GPS, TV or laser guided weapons. Many planes who can do bomb attacks also have air to ground modes to support surveillance, even though they do not have PGM capability. The F-16A and the APG-66 is a good example.
You can attack a target that has been subject to prior reconnaissance study, but that requires two missions to do the job of one. Not to mention it loses the element of surprise, or the opportunity to strike the enemy when a plane is there, instead of having to call a seperate strike mission. Why not just survey the land for targets yourself, locate the targets, then attack. Close support and ground attack missions often require a lot of autonomous reaction based on opportunity, in addition to preplanned strikes.
There are uses of A2G radar modes with TV and laser PGMs. For example, the radar can que the TV seeker to a suspicious object in the ground map. The TV seeker can display the image to the WSO for target identification. You can also use the radar to cue or aim a laser target designator towards an identified target in the ground map. Radar can see through bad weather where optics can fail. If you want to bomb blind through bad weather, you have to learn to rely completely on your radar and instruments. Night bombing is another, even just low level night flying.
Oh and let us not forget terrain avoidance. This is especially important for low flying strike aircraft.
I just wanted to point out, that you don´t need a ground mode capable radar to do bombing or ground attack missions. The radar is a very helpfull tool to fix the position of the aircraft in comparison to the target. It is also usefull to cue other seekers on to the target. And it is usefull if you want to do night bombing missions, which can be fairly accurate if done from level level. But I think it is has been loosing importance. With the arrival of laser and GPS guided weapons the old radar bombing has become obsolete. It was far more important during the 80ies for the F-111 and Tornado community (and SU -24 on the other side) who would depend a lot on the radar to deliver their payload with pinpoint accuracy.
Today it has lost much of its importance for attacks against fixed target. With GPS you only need the exact coordinates and that is it. Those can be programmed precisely at your home base.
It has become however increasingly important for moving targets and targets of oportunity. If you can pinpoint such a target well enough to get a GPS fix and can also reprogramm your munitions with the new target coordinates, then the ground modes matter. But then you also need the weapons that give you the flexibility. Weapons that can be reprogrammed in flight and can be updated in flight to hit a moving target.
You would also like to use different sensors and net centric warfare. Or even sent an UACV to attack coordinates taken from your high resolution grund mapping – moving target indicator capable radar.
For the weapons available to the SU it mostly does not matter.
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