Dr. Dabbs – Frogfoot Larceny: The Russian Warthog

in Authors, Will Dabbs
A-10 airplane soaring over desert landscape
The A-10 is such a cool airplane.

The A-10 Warthog

Through 45 years of faithful service, the A-10 Thunderbolt II has been rightfully revered by the earth pigs it has supported. If ever there was a grunt’s airplane it is the mighty Warthog. That thing, like me to a degree, is just so ugly it’s cool.

A-10 Warthog front view of painted mouth
The A-10 Warthog is basically a gigantic Gatling gun with an airplane wrapped around it.

The whole plane is built around a seven-barrel 30mm GAU-8/A rotary cannon. Interestingly, the cannon is offset slightly to the left. This is to make room for the nose gear to retract into the fuselage. The gun fires at the 9 o’clock position so the line of recoil still aligns with the aircraft centerline. The gun cycles at 3,900 rpm and typically carries 1,174 rounds onboard. As the plane is designed for low-level close air support, the gun also recycles its empties back into its ammo bay. That way it doesn’t drop those big honking shell cases on your head at 350 knots. It’s a brilliant bit of engineering. 

A-10 Warthog bursting through clouds
All grunts adore the Warthog.

I worked with A-10s a few times back when I wore the uniform and always came away impressed. Featuring titanium armor, a simply breathtaking payload, impressive loitering time, and unparalleled maneuverability in the close fight, the A-10 earned all its love. They tell me that the 1970s-vintage Warthog would be easy meat in today’s modern air defense environment. That’s truly a shame. It is one cool airplane.

The rook seems like a pretty homely bird to me. That’s not the creature I would pick to name my spiffy new attack plane after.

The Su-25 “Frogfoot”

The Soviets saw the writing on the wall back during the Cold War as well and decided to build their own dedicated close air support platform. The end result was the Sukhoi Su-25 Grach. Grach literally translates as “Rook.” A rook is a large-ish crow-looking bird that will eat almost anything. Hard to say why you’d want to name your ground attack aircraft after one. But then again, I’m not Russian.

Su-25 "Frogfoot" enjoying a leisurely flight
The Su-25 was designed to perform a similar mission to that of the American A-10.

The Grach is a single-seat, twin-engine close support aircraft developed in the Soviet Union by the Sukhoi Design Bureau. The Su-25 was designed to provide the same sort of service to Soviet Ground Forces as the A-10 did for NATO. The Grach was a dedicated close air support platform developed in the days before multi-role combat aircraft became all the rage. The NATO designation is “Frogfoot.” I would love to know how they come up with that goofy name.

Technical Details of the Su-25

Su-25 "Frogfoot" undergoing maintenance
The Su-25 is a rugged and versatile close-support aircraft.

The prototype Su-25 first flew on 22 February 1975. The aircraft went into series production in 1978 at Tbilisi in the Soviet Republic of Georgia. Since then the plane has been widely exported. More than 1,000 copies have been produced.

Su-25 flying against a blue sky
The Su-25 is a fairly big airplane.

The Su-25 is 51 feet long and sports a 47-foot wingspan. The maximum takeoff weight is 42,549 pounds. The Grach is powered by a brace of Soyuz/Turmansky R-195 turbojet engines. Maximum speed is 526 knots or 606 mph.

The Frogfoot used a dual 30mm gun carrying 250 rounds
Both the Su-25 and the late model Mi-24P Hind attack helicopter use the same two-barrel 30mm gun.
The GSh-30-2 autocannon will indeed bring the pain. The gun is shown here on a Mi-24P attack helicopter.

The Su-25 carries an integral 30mm Gryazev-Shipunov GSh-30-2 autocannon with a basic load of 250 rounds. The plane has eleven hardpoints for a wide variety of external stores including cannons, dumb bombs, rocket pods, air-to-air and air-to-surface missiles, and whatever else the Russians can think of to hang onto them.

Su-25, nicknamed "Frogfoot", after a spectacular crash
The operational envelope of the Su-25 Frogfoot puts it well within range of all sorts of stuff specifically designed to kill it.

The Su-25 has seen active combat service against the Mujahidin during the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, in the Iran-Iraq War, in Russian livery in Syria, and in a variety of lesser violent brouhahas. The Frogfoot has also seen extensive use in the recent war in Ukraine. If YouTube is to be believed, the Ukrainians are slaughtering the Russian Air Force. Half a dozen Ukrainian Su-25s have also been brought down. Depending upon what you read it looks like the Russians have lost around nineteen of the jets as of this writing. However, this is a chaotic war, and everybody has an agenda. You have to take everything you see on the Internet with a grain of salt. 

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It’s a Weird Old World…

The first Nagorno-Karabakh conflict arose from the ashes of the Cold War.

The Nagorno-Karabakh War spanned from 1988 until 1994. During this six years’ fight, Armenia waged a protracted and bloody conflict with its neighbor Azerbaijan. Armenia ultimately prevailed. The war sparked to life again in 2020 and resulted in about a month’s worth of vicious fighting. This was one of the first modern wars in which drones played an outsized role.

Men never have needed much of an excuse to blow each other away.

I tried to figure out the details of this curious little bloodletting and eventually just gave up. It seemed to orbit around a breakaway republic called Artsakh, but I never could really divine the details. The second fight in 2020 ended with an Azerbaijani victory. The events we will discuss momentarily occurred in 1993 during the first iteration.

Small arms are cool and all, but artillery is the real killer on the modern battlefield.

Both Armenia and Azerbaijan are former Soviet Republics. The war was undeclared and fought across arid mountain wastes. In such terrain, close air support and artillery were critical players.

Frogfoot Needed?

One of the challenges involving modern weapon systems is that they can become too expensive to lose.

By 1993 the balance sheet was fairly lopsided. Armenia had but 2 operational fighter jets remaining–both Su-25s. Because of their dearth of resources, the Armenians rarely used these two aircraft operationally. Azerbaijan, by contrast, had an ample air force and relied upon it regularly. As a result, Armenian ground forces became rightfully accustomed to viewing any combat aircraft actually flying overhead as belonging to the enemy.

An Unconventional Military Procurement Strategy

At least a couple of the Su-25 Frogfoot ground attack fighters in service during the Nagorno-Karabakh War were legit stolen.

The first Su-25 in Azerbaijani service was an ex-Russian Air Force plane stolen in April of 1992 by an Azeri pilot named LT Vaghit Kurbanov. This particular aircraft was used to bomb civilian targets in the breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh enclave. Armenian forces eventually shot it down on 13 June 1992. The pilot was killed.

Frogfoot Su-25 aircraft lined up in the factory
One of the Su-25 aircraft used during this ghastly little war was apparently pilfered from the factory.

On the other side, one of the two operational Armenian Su-25 jets was actually stolen directly from the factory in the Republic of Georgia. On 15 November 1993, Georgian CPT Sergey Zhitnikov secretly entered the cockpit of a spanking new Su-25K Frogfoot, cranked the engines, and launched before anyone could stop him. He ultimately flew the pilfered plane all the way to Armenia.

Completely destroyed Frogfoot
There is little more embarrassing than punching out of your jet right over some village you just bombed. In this case, all the chaos stemmed from a misunderstanding.

Unlikely Survival

One day in 1993, those last two Armenian Su-25s were deployed in support of ground forces operating in the disputed mountainous region of Artsakh. The two Armenian strike aircraft successfully engaged their targets. However, as they were flying back home they flew over a supposedly friendly Armenian village. An Armenian soldier justifiably mistook the Su-25s for enemy aircraft and shot the stolen plane down. The pilot ejected from the stricken aircraft and survived.

Getting intermittently bombed by modern tactical aircraft doesn’t typically leave a guy in a terribly forgiving mood.

The hapless Armenian pilot landed near the village from which he had been shot down. Apparently, he was fairly disheveled and a bit worse for the wear. Mistaking him for an Azerbaijani pilot, the incensed Armenian villagers roughly collected him and administered a proper beating in the process. The Azerbaijanis regularly relied on their substantial air force and, as a result, many Azeri fighter jets had been shot down by Armenian troops. As Armenians so seldom used their jets, the villagers assumed the poor guy was lying about his actual loyalties.

With tensions running high, it can be tough to treat folks in a civil fashion.

This ill-treatment went on for a while. However, after a few hours the pilot successfully convinced the angry villagers that he was actually one of the good guys.

Su-25 being shot down over Ukraine
This is a screen grab of a Russian Su-25 being shot down over Ukraine.

The running joke thereabouts was that Armenia had both shot down half of its own air force and taken it prisoner in a single day. Considering the guy survived I guess no lasting harm was done.

The Rest of the Story

Frogfoot cockpit
The Su-25 was an analog airplane. All these steam gauges actually make for a fairly basic cockpit as a result.

The Su-25 has had a curious operational history. In August of 2008 during the Russo-Georgian War, Russian Su-25s actually attacked the Tbilisi Aircraft Manufacturing plant where those very planes had been produced. In so doing they heavily damaged the factory airfield from which the completed aircraft were launched years before. That’s just weird.

Su-25 "Frogfoot" with tiger decals
There have been several mysterious Su-25 crashes.

In December of 2006, a Congolese Su-25 on a routine ferry flight from one airbase to another disappeared without a trace. No wreckage was ever located. A second Congolese Frogfoot suffered an engine failure during an Independence Day celebration in the summer of 2007 and crashed, killing the pilot. In March of 2008, a Russian Su-25 spontaneously exploded during a live fire exercise over Primorsky Krai some 90 miles from Vladivostok. The pilot was killed. A subsequent investigation found that the doomed pilot’s wingman had inadvertently launched a missile that tracked true to his buddy. Ouch.

This is a screen grab from the crash of a Russian Su-25 Frogfoot in Crimea.

On 12 September 2022, a pair of Russian Su-25s launched from a military airfield in Crimea on a strike mission against Ukrainian targets. On climbout one of the planes suddenly veered sharply to the left and crashed in a massive ball of fire. You can see the video of the event here–https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-jnZXnAmec. The specific causes of the crash are murky. If news reports are to be believed, it was likely some variation on Russian rank incompetence. It might have been something as simple as an excessive bank angle at low speed in a heavy airplane.

Despite its age, the Su-25 still remains a potent force on the battlefield.

Nowadays Armenia operates eleven Su-25K’s. I’m sure if things heat up again some Armenian pilot will just sneak off someplace and steal a few more. Regardless, the Su-25 will no doubt continue to soldier on for years to come.

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About the author: Will Dabbs A native of the Mississippi Delta, Will is a mechanical engineer who flew UH1H, OH58A/C, CH47D, and AH1S aircraft as an Army Aviator. He has parachuted out of perfectly good airplanes at 3 o’clock in the morning and summited Mount McKinley, Alaska, six times…always at the controls of an Army helicopter, which is the only way sensible folk climb mountains. Major Dabbs eventually resigned his commission in favor of medical school where he delivered 60 babies and occasionally wrung human blood out of his socks. Will works in his own urgent care clinic, shares a business building precision rifles and sound suppressors, and has written for the gun press since 1989. He is married to his high school sweetheart, has three awesome adult children, and teaches Sunday School. Turn-ons include vintage German machineguns, flying his sexy-cool RV6A airplane, Count Chocula cereal, and the movie “Aliens.”

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  • Hatchetman July 10, 2023, 4:24 pm

    Fascinating about the Armenian and Azerbaijan conflicts, not a lot of mainstream information out there on that series of events. That takes some serious guts to steal a warplane straight from the factory.

  • Joe Kelarjian July 10, 2023, 4:13 pm

    The story is, Azeris are Turkic and Turkey (Ottoman Empire) Murder 1,500,000+/- and not quite that much for Greeks, Macedonians, Assyrians and more ethnicities. Then Stalin simply ripped Kharabagh (Artzakh) away from Armenia and gave it to the Turkic Azeris.
    They are murderous animals and need to be put down.
    Now you know.

  • kb31416 July 10, 2023, 3:30 pm

    The A10 has long been my favorite aircraft.
    As a first rate arm chair general, I disbelieve the unspecified vulnerabilities warned of by the neigh sayers, and expect that the USAF will regret retiring the A10.
    Imaging what the Ukrainians could have done with a few A10s when the Russians were sitting bogged down for days/weeks with mile after mile of stalled convoys in the early phase of their invasion?

  • Terry Story July 10, 2023, 9:26 am

    Add to his list of accomplishments, Dr. Dabbs is an amazing wordsmith! I thoroughly enjoy everything that I have seen that he writes and will always read whatever it is. I am glad that he is in a more settled place now and enjoys his life as it is, and I hope that he will pen many more of these kinds of interesting articles for us great unwashed flyover types to enjoy! Thanks Dr. Dabbs!

  • Clem July 10, 2023, 7:43 am

    The A-10 was the end result of a competitive fly-off between the A-9 and the A-10. The Air Force preferred the A-10 design. I tended to prefer the A-9. It looks like the Russians also preferred the A-9. The SU-25 appears to me to be a bastardized copy of the A-9.

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