The Su-34 is a new warplane whose crews are at the mercy of old weapons … and even older doctrine.
The Sukhoi Su-34 was supposed to change the Russian air force. The twin-engine, twin-seat, supersonic fighter-bomber—a highly-evolved variant of the Su-27 air-superiority fighter—promised to usher in a new era of high-tech, precision bombing. Instead, the Su-34s have flown into Ukraine lugging the same old dumb bombs. A lack of precision-guided munitions—not to mention Russian doctrine that conceives of aircraft essentially as flying artillery—forces the $50-million warplanes to fly low through the thickest Ukrainian air-defenses in order to have any chance of delivering their bombs with any degree of accuracy. As a result, Su-34s are falling from the sky in numbers that must be startling for air force commanders. Their newest planes are suffering the same fate as their oldest planes. The Russian air force ordered its first batch of 32 Su-34s back in 2008. A second batch of 92 followed in 2012. The Russians as of 2021 possessed around 122 Su-34s in several regiments. Even taking into account losses, by 2030 the air force could operate nearly 200 Su-34s. The plan, all along, has been for the Su-34 to replace the 1970s-vintage Su-24, around 70 of which linger in service. Nowhere was that more evident than in Syria. The Kremlin deployed Su-34s to Syria starting in November 2015, shortly after a Turkish F-16 shot down a Russian Su-24 that reportedly strayed into Turkey’s air space. The Su-34 is impressive to look at. The type borrows the airframe of the Su-27 but adds a two-person cockpit with side-by-side seating. The Su-34 can strike targets as far as 600 miles away while carrying 12 tons of bombs and missiles, including air-to-air missiles. The 22-ton jet is armed with a 30-millimeter cannon and also boasts a multi-mode radar and a Khibiny electronic-countermeasures suite.
