Su-39, "Khod/Kinzhal" Thermal Imaging/Radar Container

  • Su-39 and Su-25T should receive a thermal imaging container (1st generation)
  • No, despite the existence of this container in life it should not be on a plane for 70 euros
0 voters

The Su-25T and Su-39 are potentially the most interesting attack aircraft in the USSR. They were created in the 90s, when the economy was in a very bad shape, but they offered very interesting ideas, and it’s a shame they were abandoned.

The Su-39 was designed precisely as an all-weather aircraft, capable of performing the task in difficult conditions. For this purpose, it was designed with the “Kopye-25” radar and another under-the-radar container, which for some reason is missing in the game.

It is the “Khod/Kinzhal” (“Move/Dagger” in English) container. This is a thermal imaging container (the first in the USSR), combined with Kinzhal Millimeter-wave range radars, designed to guide ATGMs through smoke, dust, and other obstacles. However, apparently this radar could not be used to guide R-27s, unlike “Kopye-25” radar (correct me if this is wrong).

The “Khod” system was developed by the Central Design Bureau “Geophysics” according to the decision of the MIC of August 1984.
It’s hard to find exact data on thermal imager performance, but in the game we have all thermal imaging cameras implemented rather crudely.
Obviously, it was a 1st generation thermal imager, of no better quality than the Tornado or the Harrier.

Radar station “Kinzhal”: This radar was developed by NPO “Leninets” of the USSR Ministry of Radioprom according to decision of MIC of August 1983.

The Su-25TM (Su-39) (tail number 10, technical name T8-М10) was presented with a container like that at the 92 Mosaeroshow (1992). Subsequently the Su-39 was usually presented with the Kopye-25 radar

It seems to me that the Su-39 (as well as the Su-25T after modifications) should have the “Kod/Kinzhal” container, because their high combat rating requires a thermal imager. almost all attack aircraft at 11.3+ (Tornado, Harrier gr 7, Mirage 2000D) have thermal imagers.
I know the USSR had problems with thermal imagers, but this is literally one of the only opportunities to see a thermal camera on pre-2000 aircraft and it should be taken advantage of.
It seems to me that thermal imaging cameras are no longer a luxury, but a necessity, because in a duel against SAMs you need to locate the target as quickly as possible. On a Su-39 it’s very difficult to do that.
It is important to note that the addition of this container is not strictly an improvement, but an option, because the “Kopye-25” also has its own features (especially if one day we see the R-27)

Finally, I would add that I think the Su-25T should become the Su-25TM and get openable modifications in the form of the Spear-25 and Khod/Kinzhal container.
The Su-39 costs $70\euro and does not offer any new missiles (the X-29T and X-25ML were already in the game, and missiles like the X-25MT and X-25MTP (which are image-guided X-29s like the X-29T) have not been added). It seems that the top premium vehicles should have more cool unique equipment to justify the price.

Now the Su-39 is a difficult airplane to control and implement, with a lot of keys and details you need to know to counter the SAM.

Below I will give a lot of pictures and book clippings:

Spoiler

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references:

  1. 1/98 MIESIECZNIK Nowa Technika Wojskowa
  2. Su-25 Frogfoot in action ISBN 0-89747-287-X
  3. Sukhoi Frogfoot Su-25, Su-28 and Su-39
  4. PIOTR BUTOWSKI - MONOGRAFIE LOTNICZE SU-25 SU-34
  5. SUKHOI Su-25 FROGFOOT -ALEXANDER MLADENOV
  6. Sukhoi Su-25 Frogfoot The Soviet Union’s Tank-Buster - Yefim Gordon
  7. Su-25 ‘FROGFOOT’ UNITS IN COMBAT - Alexander Mladenov
  8. ВОЙНА В ВОЗДУХЕ Cy-25 «Грач» №95
  9. Виктор Марковский, Игорь Приходченко Штурмовик Су-25 «Грач» БРОНИРОВАННЫЙ НАСЛЕДНИК ИЛ-2
    КРЫЛАТЫЙ УНИВЕРСАЛ СУ-25ТМ | МОДЕЛИСТ-КОНСТРУКТОР
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Its interesting that it didnt receive a thermal pod, I can see that they might have wanted to off-set some of the potential strength from the Vikhrs but at 11.3, it does probably need one

Though a model has been datamined

Kingtiez shared that image in another thread

So might just be a work in progress and it will be added in the future once finished.

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Note that Khod is the exact form of container that is in the game, and the one in the files is just the Mercury

The Mercury has the wrong shape now.

I don’t think Vihr’s, especially in their current state are a huge strength of the plane. They are awkward to point and have limited damage. Their maneuverability has been degraded many times over.

I see many carrying 2 Kh-29s, 3 Kh-25s and only 8 Vihr(and often not taking them at all).

My experience, too, is that a big missile is better than a small one, since you almost never get to fly that long to realize 16.
image

Pardon me, there’s a mistake in the photo, too. In fact, it’s different. I looked at the Russian drawings and books.

This is true. Though with how buggy TIALD pods are and some rumoured artificial range capping, its probably best they arent rushing it at the moment, you’d get to enjoy it without quite as many bugs when it arrives.

I also want to complain about Mercury. It’s disgusting, you can’t see anything in it.

Compare it to what it looks like in the DSC

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That’s all targetting pods in general. TIALD is a little better, but no where near as good as it should be. Was a debate in the Harrier forum thread I believe about what optic it has and what the quality should be like. I cant be bothered to go search for it, but I think the conclusion was that the TIALD pod has somewhere between 1/3-1/2 less resolution it should have. Especially in thermal

One thing about Thermals / Electro Optical systems as a whole is that its not obvious (or apparently entirely consistent) to which standard Gaijin are actually using to model things or if they are going to be revised or are being otherwise limited for performance reasons.

e.g.

Which systems employ contrast stretching and if it should be modeled mechanically

  • Basically the image that the pilot / lock on algorithm is using is actually reconstructed dynamically using the difference in apparent temperature of elements within the scene to artificially improve contrast, additionally there is often a heavily restricted colour gradient to bucket things together and produce a definitive contrast between elements in a scene regardless of the actual difference in observed radiation.

This of course is obviously difficult / intensive to model as it can’t just be provided by a greyscale overlay

Systems that have a mismatch between the sensor, on-board display, and the Aspect ratio the screen WT is running on, and the interplay between them.

  • Which causes issues like the apparent resolution of the AGM-65D’s seeker being really bad since it is being stretched from 1:1 to ~4:3 or worse, and so really should be masked, like the sights in tanks are.

How to convert the resolution of scanning type sensors as they don’t tend to have discrete pixels additionally digital zoom appears to be completely neglected, so performance can be hard to appropriately benchmark / account for.

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Intresting, Thank you, though, being a video game, you’d think it would be easy to fake

Not to do it convincingly let alone in real time and that is only a small part of things, considering that to do IIR properly you would need to render the scene a number of times sequentially per frame(which itself needs to be completed multiple times a second to maintain the frame rate) in order to reconstruct it, and have a a good idea of how emissivity of specific materials (and the visual medium’s bandpass), and their effective temperature in the scene which requires some degree of thermodynamic processes to be implemented, let alone the effects of the sun (or other point sources) on the scene. and to what degree these could be implemented into the Dagor engine itself without massive effort.

Sure a whole lot could be handwaved / generalized but the issue remains that without going to some specific lengths its always going to be an approximation that is inaccurate in some areas, which further leads to issues though some would be much more easily fixed than others.

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Very true. Thanks again

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+1, I’m all for it receiving Khod/Kinzhal.

Also here are some more sources
https://www.aviaport.ru/directory/aviation/su39/

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Thanks, I’ll add the names of the source books later today.

In the Russian-speaking forum, 90% of those surveyed were in favor of introducing a thermal container.

I think it is the dual container that is needed so that the airplane has interesting ground radar mechanics.

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Added books to the list of sources.
Thank @Smoak741 for help.

  1. 1/98 MIESIECZNIK Nowa Technika Wojskowa
  2. Su-25 Frogfoot in action ISBN 0-89747-287-X
  3. Sukhoi Frogfoot Su-25, Su-28 and Su-39
  4. PIOTR BUTOWSKI - MONOGRAFIE LOTNICZE SU-25 SU-34
  5. SUKHOI Su-25 FROGFOOT -ALEXANDER MLADENOV
  6. Sukhoi Su-25 Frogfoot The Soviet Union’s Tank-Buster - Yefim Gordon
  7. Su-25 ‘FROGFOOT’ UNITS IN COMBAT - Alexander Mladenov
  8. ВОЙНА В ВОЗДУХЕ Cy-25 «Грач» №95
  9. Виктор Марковский, Игорь Приходченко Штурмовик Су-25 «Грач» БРОНИРОВАННЫЙ НАСЛЕДНИК ИЛ-2
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+1 would definitely like to see this in game

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Yes, that would be a very interesting double-name container.

This is the time to add the USSR first pod with thermal imaging where other nations have already had theirs for some time.
Later on it will be the advanced Russian aircraft that will have more advanced thermal pod container and we will probably see them in a long very long time.
From me +1

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Up, We need more feedback.

This is the only option for the USSR to get a thermal imager before the Su-30.

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The Thermal Kh-25 would be a nice addition

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