Su-25 Frogfoot

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Originally a part of the aircraft selection in LOMAC, the Su-25 was ported over to DCS through the FC3 package. Unlike the free Su-25T variant that comes included with DCS, this base model has been produced in the thousands over the last 40 years, and has been fielded in almost every major war in that period.

Just like the other FC3 planes, the Su-25 is more designed to be controlled through a standardised set of keyboard shortcuts than through any kind of advanced set of peripherals, nor does it feature an interactive “clicky” cockpit.

Features

The Su-25 does one thing: it carries what is known in the scientific community as a fuckload of bombs and rockets. Only a couple of them are, perhaps not smart, as such, but at least reasonably precise because they are laser guided.

The Frog offers:

• A good selection of unguided high and low-drag rockets and bombs.
• A simple, but highly accurate and effective CCIP mode to help deliver all of those.
• A laser rangefinder/designator that will further improve the accuracy of the CCIP, but which will overheat and burn out at the most inopportune moment possible.
• Laser-guided missiles that ensure you will want to use the designator until it burns out.
• The regular Russian RWR that will not help much because you are not dodging anything in this particular bucket.

Comes with the built-in campaigns Su-25 - Cold War Warrior and Su-25 - Revance.

Flying the Su-25

Rule #1 of the Su-25: get any notion of flying a fighter jet out of your mind. You are a bomb truck. You deliver lots and lots of things that go boom — slowly and preferably not uphill. You are not fast, nor agile, and when fully loaded, small hills can quickly become very threatening obstacles unless you prepare for them well in advance.

Cockpit overview

Getting into the air

The process of getting the Su-25 into the air is the same as with all FC3 aircraft:

• Make sure you have loaded the correct weapons and filled up on chaff, flares, and fuel.
  (This can only be done with the canopy open and engines off, press LAlt-' to open the outfitting menu.)
• RShift-L to turn the power on.
• LCtrl-C to open or close the canopy, as needed.
• RShift-Home to start both engine at the same time.
  (RShift-End stops both engines; RAlt/RCtrl-Home/End starts and stops the left and right engines individually.)
• Wait for the engines to spool up and stabilise.
• Num+/- controls the throttle; increase it carefully to get going and do not go too fast.
  (W controls wheel brakes; be particularly careful when turning since doing it at high speed will make you tip over, scrape your wings, catch fire, explode and — worst of all — become the subject of innumerable screen shots.)
• Use Z and X to control nosewheel steering (and also rudder) to make your way to the runway and line up.
• LShift-F lowers the flaps — they should be in the middle position for takeoff.
• Throttle up to max and try to stay in a straight line as you barrel down the runway.
• Pull back gently to take off.
• Raise landing gears with LCtrl-G; raise flaps with LCtrl-F.

Shooting something

Firing a laser-guided missile.

More information

• Sukhoi Su-25 on wikpedia.
• Su-25 FROGFOOT Grach (Rook) on globalsecurity.org
• Robert Sogomonian's Su-25T video tutorial series.