This story shall the good man teach his son; And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by, From this day to the ending of the world, But we in it shall be remember'd; We few, we happy few, we band of brothers; For he to-day that sheds his blood with me Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile, This day shall gentle his condition: And gentlemen in England now a-bed Shall think themselves accursed they were not here, And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.
Shakespeare. Henry V, 1598
Su-24 FENCER
The SU-24M is a supersonic front-line bomber, an upgraded version of the SU-24. It is designed for delivering high-precision targeted missile and bomb strikes against ground and surface targets under any weather and time conditions. The Su-24 jet bomber is a Soviet two-seat (pilot and navigator seats are next to each other, not behind each other) supersonic front-line bomber with a variable sweep wing, designed to deliver missile and bomb strikes in simple and difficult weather conditions, day and night, in particular, at low altitudes with targeted destruction of ground and surface targets.
From the fall of 2022, measures were taken for Ukraine to receive Storm Shadow missiles from Great Britain. First, on the territory of Poland, with the help of Western allies, Ukrainian Su-24M front-line bombers and Su-24MR reconnaissance aircraft were modernized as a firing platform for these missiles. British long-range Storm Shadow missiles, which had recently entered service with the Armed Forces of Ukraine, are launched from Su-24 tactical aircraft.
On 24 May 2023, Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov showed his British counterpart Ben Wallace a photo of the first aircraft converted to launch these missiles. His flight number 60 is "yellow". The plane was produced back in Soviet times, way back in 1987, but in 2017 it was repaired at the Mykolaiv Aircraft Repair Plant (NARP). In 2023, the board was modernized to launch NATO missiles.
Ben Wallace left an autograph on the photo, which reads: "To all the brave "few" who risk all for the glory of Ukraine". The defence of Britain during the Battle of Britain depended on the courage of just 2,937 British and Allied aircrew. The average age of the Battle of Britain pilots was just 20 years old. British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, famously expressed the incredible debt owed to the Battle of Britain aircrew: “Never in the field of human conflict has so much been owed by so many to so few.”
"'We few, we happy few, we band of brothers" is one of the well-known lines from the rousing St. Crispin's Day Speech given by the king in Shakespeare's Henry V. Henry was exhorting his men to greater valour and toward a famous victory against the French at the Battle of Agincourt. The fact that they were outnumbered by the French should not concern them and would only serve to strengten their brotherhood and reputation in the future.
After working out all the details, the Minister of Defense of the Kingdom, Ben Wallace, confirmed the transfer of Storm Shadow missiles to Ukraine on May 11, 2023 . And in the following days, on May 12 and 13, rocket attacks were carried out on military facilities of the Russian army in occupied Luhansk (the territory of the former Machine-Building Plant "100" and the former building of the University of Internal Affairs). Propaganda media displayed remnants of the Storm Shadow missile.
Storm Shadow attacks continued. According to the Minister of Defense of Ukraine Oleksiy Reznikov, as of the end of May 2023, all launched Storm Shadow missiles without exception hit their intended targets. The Storm Shadow warhead weighs 450 kg. The rocket is tandem. It is designed to destroy highly protected objects: the first part of the rocket penetrates the ground or reinforced concrete, after which the warhead works. The full version of Storm Shadow for developing countries (Great Britain, France, Italy) has a declared range of 560 km. For the export version, the figures are twice as low - 250-300 km.
The first flight of the Su-24 aircraft took place in the Soviet Union on January 17, 1970, and after 5 years the aircraft was put into service. As for the Su-24M, it is a modified version of the Su-24, which entered service in 1983. The Su-24M differed from the basic modification in the new sighting and navigation system PNS-24M 'Tiger' and was capable of automatically flying with terrain avoidance at an altitude of 50 m. The armament of the Su-24M is fully consistent with that used on the Su-24 aircraft, and includes the built-in cannon GSh-6-23 (GSh-6-23M) and three suspended SPPU-6 installations.
Improvements were associated with the establishment of an improved sighting and navigation system. This increased the combat qualities of the aircraft and made it possible to use new weapons - guided missiles with laser and television homing heads.
Su-24M can be a carrier of tactical nuclear charges. The armament of the Su-24M aircraft includes small arms and cannon weapons, bombing weapons, unguided aircraft missiles, air-to-surface, air-to-radar and air-to-air guided missiles.
This aircraft is a combat vehicle with two engines and a variable sweep wing. Depending on the flight mode, the front parts of the wing (console) are set in one of four positions: 16 ° - on takeoff and landing, 35 ° - in cruising subsonic flight, 45 ° - during combat maneuvering and 69 ° - when flying in transonic and supersonic speeds.
Su-24M can carry several types of weapons at once, in particular: small arms and cannon weapons; unguided aerial bomber weapons; unguided aircraft missiles; guided air missiles of the air-to-surface and air-to-radar classes; guided air-to-air missiles. Additionally, it can be armed with from two to six guided missiles with laser and television homing heads, depending on their weight and dimensions.
The aircraft has 8 suspension points: four under the fuselage, two under the center section, and two under the rotary wing consoles. The maximum mass of the combat load of the Su-24M aircraft is 7500 kg. The weapons control system (MSS) installed on board helps to manage the preparation and selection of weapons, the control of the launch (dump) of aircraft weapons and fuses for various aircraft loading options.
Today it is in service with many countries of the world, including Russia (70 units) and Ukraine [14].
The Su-24MR jet reconnaissance aircraft is designed to provide intelligence information to the command of the ground forces and front-line aviation, and in coastal areas - to the navy. It can perform all-weather integrated aerial reconnaissance day and night in a wide range of altitudes and speeds to a depth of up to 400 km behind the line of combat collision when countered by enemy air defense systems. Also, this aircraft can be used for civilian purposes - to assess the radiation contamination of the area and air in the area of the nuclear power plant, detect oil spills on land and water, forest fires, map the area, and the like. This aircraft is a revised version of the Su-24M bomber, in which the Landysh electronic warfare system was installed instead of the Orion radar. The first prototype of the reconnaissance aircraft took off in December 1979, and serial production began at the aircraft factory in Novosibirsk in 1983. The aircraft is equipped with two AL-21F-31 engines with an afterburner thrust of 2 × 11500 kgf. The fuel system with a capacity of 11,700 liters, plus the possibility of hanging two additional tanks of 3,000 liters each, increases the ferry range to 2,850 km.
The on-board navigation and flight system provides for automatic withdrawal of the aircraft to a given area, flight along a programmed route, automatic return to its own airfield and landing approach up to a height of 40-50 meters. There is also an automatic low-altitude flight mode with terrain avoidance. Unlike the base vehicle - the Su-24M front-line bomber - the reconnaissance aircraft does not have offensive weapons. For defense on an external sling under the left plane, two missiles of the R-60 type can be suspended.
The reconnaissance equipment of the aircraft is represented by the onboard reconnaissance complex BKR-1, as part of the Bagnet side-looking radar, which provides viewing of a zone 24 km wide on each side of the course line, with an obscure zone of 8 km directly under the aircraft; panoramic aerial camera AP-402M; advanced aerial camera A-100; IR intelligence equipment. In addition, the Efir-1M radiation reconnaissance container and the Shpil-2M laser equipment container are placed on the external sling.
The received intelligence information can be processed directly on board the aircraft in flight. Information is transmitted to the ground through closed communication channels. Photo information can be dropped in special containers.
By 2023, Ukraine owned 20 such aircraft, but only 12 of them are in service, while others are mothballed. So, according to information from open sources, the Air Force of the Armed Forces of Ukraine had a total of about 14 units of Su-24M bombers and 12 units of Su-24MR reconnaissance aircraft, which were inherited after the collapse of the USSR, on combat duty. That is, these are aircraft manufactured in the mid-1980s. With a predicted service age of 40 years, these combat vehicles will begin to crumble already in 2025, or even earlier (it is worth remembering two accidents of Su-27 fighters in 2018 in Ukraine, as well as accidents due to technical problems with the Su-24 in Russia in 2015 and 2017).
Nevertheless, Ukraine stubbornly continued to look for ways to modernize them. So, in 2018, during an international conference with the participation of military attachés of NATO countries, the State Enterprise "Odessa Aviation Plant" presented "a prospective project for the development of Su-24MR reconnaissance aircraft with several options for upgrading the machine", which provides for the installation of new electronic systems, has to provide new , broader reconnaissance capabilities. That is, instead of buying new combat jet aircraft abroad, or investing in a new development of its own combat aircraft, Ukraine continues to spend precious resources and time on the repair, maintenance and modernization of combat vehicles, which in 5 years will still be scrap metal.
By July 2019 the State Enterprise "Nikolaev Aircraft Repair Plant" NARP worked on the repair of two combat aircraft of the Air Force of the Armed Forces of Ukraine - Su-24M and Su-24MR. These aircraft were exploited to such a state that they were delivered to the repair facility by trucks, and they will return to service at the place of permanent deployment - the 7th tactical aviation brigade named after Petr Franko in Starokonstantinov - on their own. Unfortunately, the reform of the Armed Forces of Ukraine had not yet reached combat aviation.
