Will Vietnam's Su-30MK2 be equipped with domestic smart rockets?

In live-fire training, Mi-8/17 helicopters or Su-22 attack aircraft often use S-5 rockets, while Su-30MK2 fighters are fired with more modern S-8 rockets.

The S-8 is an 82 mm unguided rocket developed by the Soviet Air Force in the 1970s to replace the lower-performance 55 mm S-5 rocket.

The S-8 rocket possessed much greater power and accuracy than the S-5 while remaining small enough to be carried by aircraft in large numbers. This weapon was officially accepted into service with the Soviet Air Force in 1984.

The S-8 rocket has a total of 14 variants with different types of warheads, including the S-8K anti-armor and anti-infantry hollow-charge - fragmentation round; the S-8B anti-bunker and fortification piercing round; the S-8D thermobaric round; the S-8O tracer round; the S-8P decoy round; and the S-8S arrow round. The versions are between 1.54 - 1.7 m long; weigh 11.1 - 15.2 kg; and have a firing range of 2 - 4 km.

B-8M1 launcher of S-8 rocket

The dedicated launchers for the S-8 rockets are the B-8M1, equipped for fixed-wing aircraft such as the MiG-27, MiG-29, Su-17/22, Su-24, Su-25, Su-27/30; and the B-8V20A, compatible with the Mi-8/17, Mi-24/28 and Ka-50/52 helicopters.

The B-8M1 and B-8V20A launchers carry 20 rounds, while there is also a smaller and lighter B-8V7 launcher that can carry only 7 rounds, but this launcher can be mounted on both fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters.

In addition to the above advantages over the S-5 rocket, the S-8 also has the advantage of being large enough to accept accessories to transform it into a guided rocket.

The above method was carried out by the US Army with the 70mm Hydra-70 rocket. This type of ammunition, after being integrated with a laser guidance device, has the ability to accurately attack ground targets no less than the AGM-65 Maverick or AGM-114 Hellfire missiles.

Hydra-70 after being equipped with laser guidance system has become a smart rocket

Returning to the case of Vietnam, currently, officers and engineers of the Air Defense - Air Force Technical Institute have a project to smarten up free-fall bombs using a method widely applied in the world, which is to add a laser beam tracking guidance device.

In principle, the laser guidance device mounted on a bomb or rocket is similar. Once we have succeeded in turning a normal bomb into a smart bomb, converting an unguided rocket into a guided one is within reach.

With the strong development of the country's defense industry recently, it is predicted that in the near future, Vietnam's Su-30MK2 multi-role fighter will be equipped with domestically-made self-guided rockets based on converting S-8 rockets available in stock.

This is a cheap solution but brings extremely great combat effectiveness.

According to Baodatviet