After its successful use during Russia’s aerial campaign in Syria, the Sukhoi Su-34 fighter bomber is now set to carry even better weapons than those that made it the jihadist terrorists’ worst nightmare, Zvezda TV reported.
During the Syrian campaign, the Su-34, very aptly designated by NATO as Hellduck, made effective use of its onboard arsenal of a 30 mm cannon, air-to-air and air-to-surface missiles and KAB-500S laser-guided bombs, destroying terrorist infrastructure facilities and command centers.
The KAB-500S satellite-guided smart bombs are designed to engage reinforced concrete shelters, runways, railway and highway bridges, military industrial installations, warships, and transport vessels and has proved itself as a highly effective weapon against Daesh and other terrorist groups fighting in Syria.
The accuracy of the KAB-500S is between 7 and 12 meters while laser-guided and TV-guided equivalents have a stated accuracy of 4 to 7 meters.
The Defense Ministry now wants to add anti-ship missiles to this impressive arsenal, such as the modified Kh-35 missile, and even plans to adapt the Su-34 to launch a new generation of the so-called aeroballistic missiles.
The Su-34 was designed to carry the Kh-15 hypersonic air-to-ground aeroballistic missile. Even though considered by experts a bit outdated, modernizing this workhorse weapon will be no problem at all.
The Kh-15 climbs to an altitude of about 40 thousand meters and then dives in on the target, accelerating to a speed of about Mach 5, which makes it the fastest aircraft-launched missile to date.
Its updated version will fly even higher and faster.
Su-34 is a multipurpose fighter-bomber capable of effectively targeting surface, sea and air objects in any geographic area with the use of all aircraft munition types. The equipment installed on the Su-34 allows for the use of weapons against several targets simultaneously.
92 modified Su-34s will be delivered to the Russian Air Force before 2020. (Russian Aviation/Business World Magazine)