by Michal Fiszer
Apr. 5, 2005
Serial production of the Su-34 has begun, according to the general director of the Novosibirsk Aviation Company (NAPO) (Novosibirsk, Russia), which is part of Sukhoi consortium.
The design team quickly discovered that providing for the required internal fuel would be impossible, so they developed a radically different airframe with a side-by-side cockpit, like that of the Su-24, with the pilot's position on the left and the weapon-systems operator on the right. This configuration enabled a large avionics bay behind the cockpit and adequately increased the fuel capacity. From the outset, the aircraft was to be air-refuelable. Initially, the aircraft was to be powered by two AL-31FM engines with 127.5 kN of afterburner thrust. The aircraft received 17 mm of titanium armor around the cockpit, in engine bays, and in the main fuel-tank area, for a total of about 1.5 tons of armor. It could carry three external fuel tanks, providing a range of up to 4,000 km.
The next prototype to fly was the sixth airframe, T10V-5 (nose No. 45), which took off for the first time on Dec. 28, 1994. It was the first aircraft to receive the B004 fire-control/navigation radar developed by NPO Lenniec (St. Petersburg, Russia), a company specializing in radar systems for bomber aircraft. The B004 has a fixed, electronically scanned, phased-array antenna and is claimed to have low-probability-of-intercept (LPI) characteristics. It has several air-to-ground modes: automatic terrain following, terrain avoidance, ground mapping, ground-target acquisition/track, moving-ground-target track, and Doppler beam sharpening (DBS). It has a range of 150 km in ground-mapping mode and 75 km in DBS mode. It can track small-sized ground targets – fixed or moving – at a range of up to 30 km. In air-to-air mode, the radar can track up to 10 targets and engage up to four of them with use of R-77 active radar-homing missiles. Larger targets (such as large bombers) can be detected out to a range of about 200-250 km, and fighter-sized targets out to about 90 km. Initially, the aircraft was to have a built-in TV observation system coupled with a laser and forward-looking infrared (FLIR) camera in a pod. Later, however, TsKB Geofizyka (Moscow, Russia) developed the Platan targeting pod, with all the electro-optical devices integrated, including a second-generation FLIR sensor and a CCD TV camera, coupled with a laser rangefinder and target illuminator. The Platan pod was successfully tested for integration with Su-34 in 2004.
The first Su-34 to receive a full avionics suite was T10V-4 (nose No. 44), flown for the first time on Dec. 26, 1996. Its integrated navigation and fire-control system had embedded Glonass/GPS, a laser-gyro inertial-navigation system (INS), a powerful central computer, the B004 radar, and the Khibiny integrated electronic-warfare (EW) system. The latter consists of an electronic-support-measures (ESM) receiver working initially in the range of 2-20 GHz, though later increased to 2-40 GHz; an infrared missile-warning system, a laser-warning receiver, the Sorbtsya podded radio-frequency (RF) jammer (fixed to the wingtips), and a large set of BVP-50 (50mm) chaff/flare dispensers. The aircraft is also to have plasma stealth technology employed (which works only at supersonic speed, since high speed is necessary to create the necessary level of air ionization), but the actual status of the system remains unknown.
The Platan targeting pod is typically attached to the front-central under-fuselage station, enabling the carriage of up to six laser-guided weapons under two of the remaining fuselage stations and four on the wing stations.
Theoretically, although the aircraft is not primarily a fighter, an air-to-air configuration is possible with up to eight air-to-air missiles in any balanced combination, including R-27ER and R-27ET types.
One of the most interesting features of the Su-34 is its possibility of receiving of target-acquisition data from reconnaissance satellites. This mode was successfully tested in 2004.
Production Su-34s are to be initially issued with units of the 10th and 14th Air Forces in the Siberian and Far East regions, respectively. Initial operational capability is planned for early 2007. The original plans to totally replace the Su-24 fleet by 2010 seem to be unrealistic, however.
(Ka-8, 1947).
