Su-25 Frogfoot

A heavily armored subsonic ground-attack jet, the Su-25 “Grach” (NATO: Frogfoot) combines a welded titanium cockpit, twin turbojets, and 10–11 hardpoints to deliver massive firepower over the battlefield — and has become the most loss-heavy fixed-wing type on both sides of the Russia–Ukraine war.

Overview

The Sukhoi Su-25 is a single-seat, twin-engine close air support aircraft developed in the Soviet Union and exported widely. Known in Russian service as the Grach (rook) and codenamed Frogfoot by NATO, it is built around survivability and firepower: a titanium-armored cockpit, rugged systems, and a 30 mm cannon backed by up to 4,000 kg of bombs, rockets and guided missiles. After decades of combat from Afghanistan to Africa, the Su-25 now forms the backbone of ground-attack aviation for both Russia and Ukraine, where it has suffered the highest visually documented fixed-wing losses of the war while adapting from low-level rocket passes to stand-off precision strikes.

Development

Sukhoi’s T8 prototype beat the Ilyushin Il-102 in a Soviet close-air-support competition and flew for the first time on 22 February 1975, per Wikipedia. Series production began in 1978 at Factory No. 31 in Tbilisi, and the type formally entered service on 19 July 1981. Production later expanded to the Ulan-Ude plant and continued until 2017, with total output exceeding 1,000 airframes Airforce Technology. The Su-25 saw its combat debut with Soviet forces in Afghanistan in the 1980s and was subsequently modernized through successive Russian upgrades (Su-25SM, SM3) and Ukrainian overhauls (Su-25M1).

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