Iran to Buy Three Su-25UBT Attack Aircrafts from Russia

Source: excerpt from 12.02.06, ARMS-TASS (Moscow)

Iran will purchase three twin-seat Su-25UBT attack aircraft from Russia, the publication Middle East News Line has reported with a reference to a source in the Russian defense industry. According to the publication’s information, the contract was concluded in 2005 and will be fulfilled during 2006. The total of the contract still has not been mentioned.

According to information of the Russian information agency NewsInfo, Iran has confirmed the fact of this deal.

According to ARMS-TASS information, the Ulan-Ude Aviation Plant delivered three new Su-25UBK airplanes to Iran in 2003. Originally it had been a question of the delivery of 12 aircraft, but the contract was signed only for three airplanes. In this connection, the Ulan-Ude Aviation Plant management expressed at that time the hope for continuation of work with Iran on this subject.

Middle East News Line report >> www.menewsline.com...

Surely Iran is preparing for and impending(?) strike. I know about the Su-25UBK, but i am clueless what this 'UBT' designated package includes



[edit on 13-2-2006 by Stealth Spy]

Maybe it's just an Iranian designition for attackplanes... not sure... here's a picture if the Su-25...

S2,

>>
Iran will purchase three twin-seat Su-25UBT attack aircraft from Russia,
...
Surely Iran is preparing for and impending(?) strike. I know about the Su-25UBK, but i am clueless what this 'UBT' designated package includes
>>

'Tankovyi' (literally tank or /anti-armor/) having been already used, this is somewhat surprising to me too.

K usually denotes the 'Kommercial' as an export variant differentiator within the overall mod-series number or letter. Usually with downgraded or altered role equipment. Sometimes foreign sourced/inserted after delivery.

My personal bet is that this is an Su-25UB with the 'M' (Modifitsirovannyi= Modfication) gear being tested on the Su-25SM refit, itself little more than a new NAVWAC with a high speed computer to speed up the weapons aiming and waypoint calculations to 'something akin' to realtime.

Perhaps reusing the T designator is an attempt to acknowledge Ulan Ude's role in the abortive 25T/TM new-generation airframe with the higher tail and upthrusted engines (I seem to recall reading /somewhere/ that only one company was authorized to produce this airframe although another plant was allowed to produce both the standard trainer and single seat variant, I think it was U2 in the former instance.).

The alternative is that it's just a bow towards the old Su-28 (25UT or Uchebno-Trenirovochnyi = flight vs. Uchebno-Boevoi = combat or weapons trainer, similar to the differences between a T-38 and an AT-38.).

The remaining 64K question is of course what platform the Iranians have that they feel they need purely a conversion aircraft for. Or if (as with the UTG) they are looking at the aircraft as some kind of an auxilliary utility platform role.

As with air to air refueling. Target tow. Or perhaps drone control.

>>
The publication Middle East News Line has reported with a reference to a source in the Russian defense industry. According to the publication’s information, the contract was concluded in 2005 and will be fulfilled during 2006. The total of the contract still has not been mentioned.
>>

As I recall-

www.milavia.net...

The UBM mod wasn't even supposed to /start/ until this year.

While this-

www.newnations.com...

Seems to indicate a more comprehensive fit with elements of what might be the Voshkod/Shkvall suite from the TM as well as other (PGM related) gear more sophisticated than that of the baseline UBM.

Something which I find strange given the original Su-25T needed the UB airframe to fill the GIB area with electronics yet your article brief specifically states that the aircraft is a _two seater_ .

Unfortunately this-

www.atmonline.cz...

Seems to be the only other text-dense article online at the moment and it's 'Russian' (Czech?) doesn't agree with FTO. The airframe pictured being a shorttail UB, not the chunkier 25TM/39.

>>
According to information of the Russian information agency NewsInfo, Iran has confirmed the fact of this deal.

According to ARMS-TASS information, the Ulan-Ude Aviation Plant delivered three new Su-25UBK airplanes to Iran in 2003. Originally it had been a question of the delivery of 12 aircraft, but the contract was signed only for three airplanes.
>>

How many Su-25s did they take from Iraq? I know I've read about a couple Su-25T's being used to support first-generation Grach in Chechnya with 'precision strike' capabilities (Laser Designator, SEAD or pathfinder) so perhaps the ideal is one similar to the KA-50/52 pairing?


KPl.

Yeah.. Even I used to be confused!!
SS, the MiG-29 UB ..

UB on russian planes means Uchebno Boen which is something like a training-combat capable version of the aircraft

Iran shouldn’t be spending one dime on aircraft right now. If I were Iran, I would be spending 100% of my entire military budget on SAM’s and ground based anti aircraft systems. Every penny spent on aircraft right now by Iran they may as well just throw in the garbage…

The next seemingly imminent conflict Iran will face will have 1000’s of the world’s best aircraft attacking it, and nothing they put in the air will survive very long. They only hope Iran has is high tech and plentiful ground based air defenses, preferably movable ones.

Although in the end it didn’t work, but Iraq had some success in 91’ with mobile launchers, nothing stationary survived more than a day or two. And not one airplane made any difference at all.

Only viable reason for Iran to obtain SU-25s is to use them on an attack against US assets in Iraq or Afganistan... but a convetional attack by 3 CAS planes would be all but useless... So my best quess would be NBC (most likely BC) attack to US/UK forces.. Low flying Su-25 might be able to get to their targets by suprise (one time mission only..)

these su-25's look like faster but less well armed and less well armoured a-10s and as such im not at all worried about them especially as they are trainers/attack aircraft.

justin

It seems like these planes are being configured to perform as the Suppression of Enemy Air Defences (SEAD) role or 'wild weasel' as it is also known.

But if these new birds are of surplus su-25s russia possesses (I bet russia still has plenty of soveit-era su-25s in inventory), they could be primarily used for Kamikaze missions on US bases, carriers, etc. I read somewhere that before the invasion of iraq, iraqi pilots escaped into iran, and asked iranian authorities to allow them to fly the once-iraqi planes into us bases. AND now they are getting special training once iran comes under attack.
iranian f-14s could be used to intercept US AWACS flying over iranian airspace so that iranian Kamikaze planes could do the most damage. Iranians have been spending alot on domestic fighter projects, azarakhsh could fly over mach 2 and could carry as much as 4 tonnes explosives.

If any sensible member of iranian gov. is on this forum, reading my post, I tell you something, buddy, do not spend a penny on aircrafts. No matter what, su-30 , etc., they stand no chance against americans, rather, spend heaps of money on russian sams, s-400 is my choice but s-300 is good enough.

RESPECT

Surely Iran is preparing for and impending(?) strike. I know about the Su-25UBK, but i am clueless what this 'UBT' designated package includes

If they are really preparing for a strike, then why would they purchase an attack aircraft, the Su-25 Frogfoot?

It would better suit them to buy some defensive fighters or atleast some second rate MiG-29's.

And proprog is right, if I was a fighter pilot in the USAF or USN, I really wouldn't be worried about enemy fighters, but SAM's like the S-300 or S-400 are very deadly.



[edit on 15-2-2006 by Hockeyguy567]

i assume that the Su-25UBT has been brought by the iranians so that after the initial air attacks have gone in and the us go in with ground troops the iranians can harrass the us troops. Another possibility is that the iranians are planning to launch revenge attacks against the american troops in iraq if the us attack iran. Neither of my ideas make that much sense as the Su-25UBT's will just get shot down, but they are the only ideas i can think of unless the iranians are confident that the us wont invade and are just buying new planes to upgrade their air force.

Justin

JB,

>>
These su-25's look like faster but less well armed and less well armoured a-10s and as such im not at all worried about them especially as they are trainers/attack aircraft.
>>

While I'm not exactly holding baited breath myself, the notion that the A-10 and Su-25 share much to be compared over is something of a tarred-with-same-mission-brush misperception.

Because though the Su-25 had roughly the same installed thrust, thrust to weight at 'similar' combat weights, it is in fact a supersonic aircraft (clean, given enough time). While the A-10's massively thick, cambered, wing means it hits compressibility burbling at a little under 450 knots at sea level and indeed is stuck right on the bleeding edge between aerostall and transonic flow breakup (between 250-300 knots) at 20,000ft.

And speed is critical when figthing offensively in a contested air environment, trying to maintain a given rate of advance.

It should also be said that though the Maverick is better than the Kh.25 series and the roughly equal to the twice-as-heavy Kh-29, the Soviet aircraft's ability to deliver these weapons and indeed conventional dumb bombs is superior to all but the late model A-10C with a LITENING pod. Courtesy of a working INS/NAVWAC and laser ranger which the Frogfoot had more or less from the start but which the AX planners were too cheap to put aboard the Hog.

Irrespective of it's having a two seat model the Su-25 can also mount the SPS-141 and AS-11/12 which makes it a fairly competent battlefield SEAD platform (against the likes Gepard/Roland and the PIVADS/Chaparral at least) if not quite a HAWK/Patriot killer.

In terms of it's antitank capacities, a direct comparison is largely a muddle of 'so what's'.

The GAU is a 6,000ft killer at 5,000ft AGL. But the A-10 cannot manage lowangle popup attacks like an F-16 or even A-7 can fast enough to make it work within range of Soviet designed (See Yom Kippur) frontal layerings of Medium Radar SAMs.

Similarly, the air is so scummy with moisture and bad lighting in Europe that the AGM-65B often didn't lock on much before 2,500ft which is considered /minimum/ gun range on the GAU. We didn't have a working TISL for about the first 3 years of deployment and when we did, we had too few OH-58C designators to make JAAT matter.

By the time the AGM-65D was fixed and the OH-58D was online, the AH-64 was the better tank killer anyway.

The Russian model for (Cold War, NATO) CAS being more pragmatic in what it accepted vs. what it couldn't operate without in the way of smart weapons, marking and weather.

RusCAS being oriented towards direct support of airmobile ops as a CAS-by-rocket-artillery rendered mission. In which they keep a streaming or roadbase alert setup close to the active front and simply zip across 20-50 aircraft with 100-150 FFAR each to point at a patch of ground with the intent to sterilize anything in it.

No finess, just ba-bam!, and an acre or three of real estate is reduced to dust devils, splinters and ash. Whether it needed to or not.

Miss the first time? Who cares, shift and repeat as needed, you will have upwards of 2-3,000 individual weapon effects.

Even armor cannot withstand such abuse for long and where resistance proves stubborn the _Frontal Aviation_ doctrinal model was simply to up the caliber with about 5 different types of rocket available up through 200+mm.

Admittedly, hunting and hitting unplanned targets/mobile forces as a function of corporate intel and sustained fires over prolonged periods is not really the Russians (proven) bag.

Stultified initiated having been shown, for instance, to cause a Grach flight lead to take his formation over a perfectly good packtrain-in-open target on their way to plaster an empty hill or village in AfG. But where this type of attack is done in support of vertical envelopements, 'targeting is free'. Because even a U.S. soldier can typically read a German map well enough to put himself in a place that a Russian has to kill him to occupy simply because it is controlling terrain.

The notion being to do cross-FLOT ops to the extent that even the 'forward=mobile' NATO defensive belts /never really form/. As they are stalled at key chokes and transits with antiarmor ambuscades of ATGW, mortars and LAW.

Thus saving the dedicated Russian RT/MRL mounted combat systems for much shorter or longer range 'applied fires' (suppression and CBat) in support of divisional OMG breakout into rear areas where we simply could not 'containment action' keep them from advancing on Hitlers Highway System fast enough to matter.

As such, the airborne infantry only needed to hold onto key chokes and transit lanes for a few hours and 'being elite' in Russian Desantnoye terms means being ground up like sausages until the Armor rolls by (i.e. it's not a continuing air support mission, just long enough to get them air-landed and then RTB to set up for the next leapfrog).

For this role, the Su-25 is superb. Because it has just enough muscle (twin 23mm gun + AA-8 on a lightly loaded, straight, wing) to take care of itself in the lolo environs.

And it /doesn't need/ really great all-round vision because it expends most or all of it's ordnance in one pass. Whereupon its 430+ knot cruise speed is used to to get it back to base and turned for the next mission until the pilot's luck runs out. Such repetetive intensity of 1PHA fires being far more important to their system than any transient (one batturn pole-pull and the A-10 is done 'maneuvering' for the next 15-17 seconds) definition of maneuverability. Nor one of 'bubble canopy' loiter as a point target armor killer with an overrated GAU.

Though the Grach is no mean vulturing machine in those areas either.

Where you are facing a dense MANPADS/VSHORADS environment, the Su-25 Euro profile is suicide. But so too is the A-10 one and they had more ADV/SPAAG than we did. Also, Frogfoot can play over the MANPADS floor whereas the Warthog is really too asthmatic to do well above 12,000ft.

The ultimate fact of the matter is that the Russian wave attack system, coupled to their (formerly) /immense/ numeric advantages and the incredibly BAD European weather, even in summer, means that most of the rules you can CAVU apply to our middleeast wars just don't apply.

Because when you have T-72's running over your Nikes, you don't really have time to worry about enemy airpower. And that's all that their system of 'CAS' is about guaranteeing the ROA of: armor uber alles.

Brutal, simple, fast. And the Su-25 is perfect compliment for that CAS-as-assault-BAI operational motif.


KPl.

Originally posted by ch1466
JB,

>>
These su-25's look like faster but less well armed and less well armoured a-10s and as such im not at all worried about them especially as they are trainers/attack aircraft.
>>

While I'm not exactly holding baited breath myself, the notion that the A-10 and Su-25 share much to be compared over is something of a tarred-with-same-mission-brush misperception.
[\quote]

I meant that they looked like they perform the samemission as an a-10 (ground attack) but are faster, less well armed and less well armoured, and that i didnt think that we should be worried about them. i wasnt trying to say that they looked identical.


ch1466 im not meaning to be offensive. your posts are all ways infomational and you sound like you know exactly what you are talking about but you often go into to much detail and often i skip your posts because there too long and technical and i cant be assed reading them.

Justin