… Under the wing lay Iraq, destroyed by the war, the consequences of the recent bombing by NATO aircraft were visible everywhere: the surface of the desert was strewn with countless craters, and fragments of cars and tanks were burning down on the broken roads. The once blooming oases of the towns have now turned into dusty ruins, the horizon was obscured by a terrible haze from burning oil wells.
In the winter of 1991, tactical strike aircraft once again proved their high combat capabilities: using high-precision ammunition, fighter-bombers completely paralyzed the country in 30 days of continuous bombing. The multipurpose vehicles F-16, F-15E, F-111 and F / A-18 caused many times more damage than the fat-bellied B-52 and the infamous stealth vehicles.
Among foreign multipurpose attack vehicles, the F-15E "Strike Eagle" is gaining more and more importance - having successfully debuted in Operation Desert Storm, the "Strike Eagle" committed crimes on the land of Yugoslavia, in order to then return to the Persian Gulf (2003). this time the F-15E became the main force of aviation: thanks to its solid combat load and perfect sighting equipment, the F-15E could find and destroy the most difficult targets.
The idea of creating a universal strike aircraft was relevant not only abroad. Back in the mid-80s at the OKB im. ON. Sukhoi began work on the creation of a new 4th generation strike vehicle based on the Su-27 fighter. The project, codenamed T-10B, was subsequently implemented as a front-line bomber Su-34. Due to the well-known political and economic changes that have taken place in our Fatherland, the serial production of the Su-34 began only a few years ago; now, new bombers are gradually replacing the aircraft of the previous generation Su-24 at the combat post. Let's hope that in the near future the Su-34 will become the main aircraft of the front-line bomber aviation of the Russian Air Force, and their export modifications will be widely recognized in the world market.
Two completely different machines, the Su-34 and the F-15E, are focused on performing the same tasks. Which car turned out to be more perfect? And in general, is it correct to compare the Su-34 with the F-15E? We will try to answer these questions.
Lineage of heroes
Flanking
A multipurpose highly maneuverable fighter with unsurpassed flight characteristics. The Su-27 brought aerobatics to a new level, opened flight modes previously unattainable in aviation. Domestic and foreign experts admit that the aircraft has the best aerodynamic scheme for today. Thanks to the integral layout and the static instability incorporated in the design, the Su-27 fighter gained superiority in close maneuvering combat over any air enemy.
Killer genes Verified hitman with 104 confirmed aerial victories. The world's first aircraft of the fourth generation, which ten years, before the advent of the Su-27, was the undisputed ruler of the skies - anyone who dared to challenge the F-15 was immediately added to the list of Igla trophies.
Su-34
A supersonic armored cruiser designed for insane low-altitude raids on enemy positions. A powerful strike vehicle based on a fighter specializes in destroying highly defended targets, night and day, in the densest fog and violent thunderstorms, in conditions of powerful electronic jamming and layered air defense.
The Su-34 combined the experience of the combat use of strike vehicles in local conflicts. For the first time in the history of aviation, the cockpit of a front-line bomber is made in the form of a durable armored capsule. The crew and the most important units of the aircraft are covered with titanium armor up to 17 mm thick.
Despite the doubts of a number of experts about the advisability of such protection on a modern aircraft (the bullet of the DShK machine gun penetrates 20 mm of armor steel from a distance of 500 m, shells of a 23-mm automatic anti-aircraft gun tear such armor to shreds at a distance of a kilometer, and about the damaging factors of the warheads of anti-aircraft missiles even worth mentioning) - despite all these doubts, the armor reliably protects the aircraft from stray bullets from small arms, which increases the survivability of the machine in low-altitude flights over enemy territory.
A unique feature of the Su-34 is the presence of a second radar for viewing the rear hemisphere - the system will warn the crew about the threat in time, and, if necessary, will respond with a salvo of guided missiles to an attempt by an enemy fighter to hit the "dry" in the back.
Strong turbulent eddies and sharp gusts of wind near the ground will not be able to prevent the crew from completing the combat mission - the sensitive electronics of the Su-34 will determine the increase in loads and the front horizontal tail of the aircraft will come to the aid of the pilots, the system automatically dampens harmful aerodynamic phenomena.
The Su-34's trademark is a two-seater cockpit, in which the pilot and navigator do not "breathe down the back of the head" to each other, but sit "shoulder to shoulder" - this solution improves the ergonomics of workplaces and simplifies interaction between crew members. The "dry" cockpit is equipped with everything necessary for long-distance raids - there is a bathroom and a mini-kitchen with a microwave oven on board, there is enough space for rest in the cockpit - one of the crew members can take a nap right on the floor between the seats.
Smart electronics independently leads the plane to the goal, the pilots quenched their hunger and settled comfortably in a warm spacious cockpit in comfortable K-36DM ejection seats … Idyll! Despite the caustic remarks about the need for such amenities on board a front-line bomber, the combat mission of which lasts 2-3 hours at most, what is wrong with the fact that the designers were able to provide such unprecedented measures for the convenience of the crew? If, on the contrary, the pilots were sitting in a narrow, cramped cockpit, talk began that engineers did not pay attention to ergonomics at all.
And what about the weapons? What will please the Russian front-line bomber of the "probable enemy"? Eight tons of combat load on 12 external hardpoints, built-in 30 mm aircraft cannon. A wide range of weapons: free-fall bombs and unguided rockets, a complex of high-precision weapons based on corrected aerial bombs and air-to-surface missiles - various in mass and purpose.
In addition to strike weapons, the aircraft can carry electronic warfare containers, suspended fuel tanks, containers of small-sized cargo and aircraft weapons for air combat, generally similar to the Su-27 fighter, on external nodes, for example, 8 medium-range RVV-AE missiles.
Despite the short service life, the Su-34 has already had a chance to take part in a real combat conflict. During the war of the "three eights", the Su-34 of the Russian Air Force was used to conduct electronic warfare over Georgian positions. During one of the sorties, he destroyed the key 36D6-M radar station near the village of Shavshvebi with an X-31P anti-radar missile, thereby paralyzing the Georgian air defense system.
F-15E "Strike Eagle"
The Strike Eagle is a largely controversial vehicle, often referred to as a multi-role fighter. Alas, this is a misconception: in fact, the F-15E is a powerful attack aircraft aimed at destroying ground targets. To call a spade a spade, the F-15E is a front-line (tactical) bomber - choose the name to your liking. I have quite good reasons on this score:
1. The claim that the F-15E is assigned to the fighter units of the US Air Force proves absolutely nothing. For example, the fighter units, along with the F-15E, include the A-10 Thunderbolt anti-tank attack aircraft. Paradox? Or meaningless secrecy?
2. Tactical bomber (I repeat: bomber!) F-15E is capable of using the widest range of air-to-surface ammunition in the world, including:
- guided and unguided bombs weighing up to 5000 pounds (2270 kg), - JDAM ammunition line (GPS-based kit that turns any free-fall bomb into a precision weapon), - three types of CBU cluster munitions
- guided missiles AGM-65 "Mavrik", heavy AGM-130 and AGM-158, - anti-ship missiles "Harpoon", - anti-radar missiles HARM, - tactical nuclear weapons - B61 bombs with eight types of warheads of various capacities, for the destruction of highly protected targets. Just in case.
3. A crew of two, the ability to fly at an ultra-low altitude in the mode of following the terrain, a radar station optimized for detecting ground targets, 10 400 kg of suspension elements (bombs, fuel tanks, sighting and navigation systems) - from these positions you need look at the plane.
4. Finally, the experience of using the F-15E leaves no doubt - before us is a bomber, bashfully disguising itself as a fighter. A terrible bloody trail stretches for the "Strike Eagle" through the mountains of Afghanistan and the oil-rich Mesopotamia, through Palestine, the Balkans and Libya … Only in the winter of 1991 in Iraq, then another 24 "experimental" F-15E flew 2142 sorties! What kind of work did Strike Needles do in Iraq? They were engaged in the search and destruction of important ground targets: missile positions of "Scuds", command posts, convoys, anti-aircraft missile systems, which accidentally survived after a deafening strike by "Tomahawks".
The strength of the Strike Eagle in its hanging containers, first of all, is the LANTIRN (Low Altitude Navigation and Targeting Infrared for Night) sighting and navigation system, which amplifies the light of the stars 25 thousand times. In technical terms, the system consists of two electronic units - navigation AN / AAQ-13 and sighting AN / AAQ-14, the data from which are projected onto the cockpit windshield indicator. The weight of each container is within 200 kg, the navigation one contains a thermal imager and a radar for tracking the terrain, the sighting one is an additional high-resolution thermal imager, a laser rangefinder and target tracking sensors. All this allows the "Strike Eagle" to make high-speed throws at an ultra-low altitude (30-70 m depending on the terrain), detect and destroy point targets at any time of the day and in all weather conditions.
LANTIRN is an indispensable attribute of most US Air Force aircraft operating in local conflicts - in addition to the F-15E, the latest modifications of the F-16 are equipped with this complex. But Strike Eagle also has some unique features, for example, the APG-70 radar with a high resolution for detecting ground objects: at a distance of 300 km, the resolution is 38 m (this is enough to notice a bend in the river channel or a contrasting building in the area urban development), from a distance of 30 km, the resolution of the Strike Needle radar is improved to 2.5 m - any point target becomes visible. Another feature of the APG-70 is the ability to map the underlying terrain, while the "picture" retains sufficient quality even when maneuvering with multiple overloads.
20 years have passed and the APG-70 with a slotted antenna array is completely outdated - at present, the old radar is being replaced with the promising APG-82. Strike Needles are the only tactical bombers in the world equipped with an active phased array radar.
Representatives of the US Air Force emphasize that the F-15E was created specifically for operations in conditions of strong enemy air defense, and in the event of a deterioration in the situation, it is able to independently stand up for itself in air combat - changes in the specialization of the aircraft have little affected its fighter qualities. The Strike Eagle is still capable of carrying and using short- and medium-range air-to-air missiles, including the AIM-120 (a favorite missile of F-15 fighters; otherwise the air battle ends before it even starts).
The flight characteristics of the fighter for gaining air superiority have also been preserved - the rate of climb of the Strike Eagle reaches 250 m / s, and the maximum speed without suspension exceeds 2.5 times the speed of sound (2650 km / h). Of course, this has little to do with the performance of his "main job" - at extremely low altitude, hung with clusters of bombs, "Strike Eagle", like the Su-34, flies at transonic speeds.
The high combat characteristics and versatility of the Strike Needle have earned it some popularity in the international arms market. In addition to the US Air Force, the expensive and complex "Strike Eagle" is limitedly exploited by Israel (25 vehicles, modification F-15I "Thunder"), corrupted by oil and its own greatness Saudi Arabia (84 vehicles, modification F-15S) and the city-state of Singapore (24 cars modification F-15SG) - by the way, this tiny country has a truly huge air force - more than 100 of the most modern combat aircraft, while the area of Singapore is 4 times smaller than the area of Moscow! Another operator of the F-15E is South Korea - in 2002, despite the participation of such "luminaries" as the Eurofighter Typhoon, Dassault Rafale and Su-35, the tender for the supply of 40 combat aircraft still won the "Strike Eagle" (Korean modification F-15K).
It is clearly seen that the "top" modification of the tactical bomber is ordered only by the richest allies of the United States, small European NATO countries prefer to buy relatively cheap F-16s. NATO aviation most often has to act in local conflicts where there is no powerful air defense, and enemy aircraft have been destroyed at airfields. When using suspended containers with sighting and navigation equipment, the difference between the F-15E and the F-16 Block 60 in such conditions is not fundamental, and the F-16 costs half the price. Although what a conversation about saving is appropriate, if only a set of containers LANTIRN costs 5 million dollars!
Results of the correspondence fight
The Russian front-line bomber was created as a result of a global rethinking of the Su-27 fighter. Despite the apparent external similarity, any element of the Su-34's design is a completely new detail. Armored cabin, chassis, airborne electronics … literally everything has changed. The front horizontal empennage appeared, but the ventral ridges and adjustable air intakes of the engines disappeared. When creating a promising Su-34 bomber, the results of recent local conflicts were taken into account, as a result, a powerful and balanced strike aircraft appeared.
The American F-15E is a successful impromptu based on a serial fighter, or rather its two-seat training modification F-15D. On the plane, only key elements have undergone changes - its avionics and weapons. "Strike Eagle" amazes with its high technologies: radar with AFAR, all-aspect active jamming station, conformal fuel tanks (made in the form of streamlined linings on the side surfaces of the aircraft).
Each machine is strong in its own way. The Strike-Needle's only convincing advantage is its vast combat experience. But, despite all the lengthy reasoning, the truth is quite obvious - once in the pilot's place, any of us would prefer the armored cockpit of the Su-34.
