I’ll be honest, I fell in love with the unusual blue camouflage of the Su-39 from the first seconds. The vehicle looks amazing.
Because of this, I started to study its history and learned a lot about it. I have read about half a dozen books and many dozens of articles. I’ve made several threads on Russian and English language forums about the Su-39 thermal imaging system, and here I wanted to tell you what was the technical specification of the Su-25TM project (aka Su-39) and how I want to see it in WT:
The Su-39 is a further modification of the Su-25T, where T stands for Tank. The Su-39 was to be a versatile all-weather aircraft for a wide range of missions:
Destruction of small-sized stationary ground targets, countering SAMs. All this in conditions of limited space and visibility.
Independent defense against enemy fighters.
Countering water targets.
And so, what is in the game now:
Can the Su-39 destroy tanks? Yes. In night weather or fog? No. Night battles are disabled now, but you can go in for a test sortie and evaluate how bad the Mercury Pod is. Mercury is a light amplification system, similar to a NV. In the game through it literally nothing can be seen and everything merges, and during the day it is useless at all.
However, in real life Khod thermal imaging system in a hanging container was tested for the Su-39, but due to the collapse of the USSR the work on it was not finalized. However, what prevents to add it to the game, as well as many other experimental things
In addition to it, the MMW (millimeter-wavelength radar) Kinzhal was developed for the Su-39. It was an 8mm radar that could see stationary ground targets with a Radar cross section of 10 square meters at a distance of 5-7 kilometers (tank has about 20-30 as far as I know). It as well as thermal imager was tested, but due to its high cost it was abandoned.
I found more information on it, including a table with specifications, from where I learned the characteristics You can see a radar similar in principle on Khrizantema-S, it can see even stationary tanks, but also tank corpses too
Why we saw Kopye-25 in the game Because it is an aviation radar, which was hastily modified for use on the Su-39 for the sake of economy. Originally it could not even see ground targets and Soviet engineers modified the electronics, filtering the signal.
It seems to me that adding the MMW Kinzhal (Dagger on English) would give the airplane variability
The Kinzhal would not capture air targets well since their RCS is much smaller than tanks, but would give it the ability to fire on any tanks, even stationary ones This would bring the Su-39 closer to its original intent
What is most interesting - as I understand it, Khod and Kinzhal were installed in the same Pod together, which allowed to have both thermal imager and radar for tanks. Sounds very interesting and unique, doesn’t it?
Now about defense against air targets. I will return to the annoying dialog about R-27 and R-73. To summarize - I believe that Su-39 should get R-27, but not R-73 (at least for now).
If we introduce R-27R (without more advanced ones) together with pod Khod+Kinzhal, then the player will have a choice - to have air defense in the form of R-27 together with Kopye-25 radar, or to be maximally effective on ground targets with Khod+Kinzhal. I think that’s an awesome choice. Also, the P-27s hang on 4 pylons, not 5, so you have to sacrifice some of the missiles for the tanks to take them.
Yeah, after all these changes, I don’t mind revising the combat rating if the developers see fit. And yes, I wouldn’t mind the Harrier or Tornado getting a couple mid-range missiles too with a possible combat rating increase.
Like which one? The other discussions have been a mad scramble for a long time where people suggest everything but don’t even know the history of the Su-39.
I, on the other hand, spent several weeks reading the books and wanted everyone to be able to see the great essay I put together.
This is my vision of the Su-39, which I think will make it a balanced and very interesting airplane
it still is the same discussion in any thread, you could just have posted it in the main thread Su-39: R77,R27,R73 - #818 by Morvran
and if you looked at the thread they mentioned a lot of what you said in the 771 posts in there
No one in that thread knows what they are talking about anymore and the discussion is going by inertia. I have structured my position and I want it to be at the top of the thread, not on page 20, where no one will see it.
I read this post, I chose not to comment because it was well written and well argued, it was not “I want R-73s and R-77 now” it was more “I think an AAM upgrade needs to be looked at but here are some interesting facts and info and some general refinements the Su-39 needs” That kind of thread is far more reasonable.
I consider these to be different things. Here I presented a complete view of the airplane within the game, and there I talked about radar and thermal imager.
People don’t read completely huge topics, so I separated them. Also, this thread is an evolution of my thoughts after communicating in that thread
I doubt we’ll see them add loads of different variants purely because there were. Only reason I guess we have both Su-25T and Su-39 is because one was premium and the potential for different AAMs in the future
Its for much the same reason I dont expect we’ll see things like the Tornado Gr1B for example. It would be easy to fill the tress with slightly different variants but there is little value in doing so other than to make the tree longer to research.
Why all of a sudden? What could the Su-25TM get so strong as to be 11.7?
Literally nothing.
I see a chance only in R-27\P-73 + Thermal imager\MMW radar, but even at 11.3 this option seems acceptable, because from this point on almost all fighters are already multi-tasking aircraft, having both excellent flight parameters and missiles for ground targets and air-to-air missiles.
Subsonic attack aircraft like su-25T and harrier are on the losing end. They have nothing to do at 11.3+ without medium range missiles
They have introduced the Su-39 now and this vehicle should justify itself now.
A radar without R-27 and anti-radar missiles is useless, and it is not an “all-weather airplane” as the Su-39 was developed in the game now. Try to use it at night or in fog and you will understand.
Only thermal imager+mmw radar will make the machine great. I will do my best to make it great.
R-73s could see an increase to 11.7, but that entirely depends on hwo they are modeled and what the rest of the game is like if/when that happens. Gr7 is at 11.7 with relatively speaking short range IR AAMs so. Who knows what could happen with the Su-39/Su-25T should they recieve large upgrades. Though Id more likely say that an imager could affect its BR more than anything else. If that addition results in a lot more A2G kills in GRB, then it could have a greater impact on its overall performacne and thus BR than any AAM