Around the same time the U.S. Air Force was looking for a dedicated close air-support aircraft, a requirement that eventually fielded the A-10 Warthog, the Soviet Union was also embarking on a search for a fixed-wing tank killer. The result was the Sukhoi Su-25, known as “Frogfoot” in the West, a plane that flies for Russia and other ex-Soviet states to this day.

In the late 1960s both the U.S. Air Force and Soviet military realized that the pursuit of fast fighter jets was leaving a gap in fixed-wing close air support (CAS) for friendly forces. The Soviet Union had fielded the Ilyushin Il-2 “Sturmovik” fighter with great success over the eastern front in World War II, and a modern day replacement was desired. The USSR’s effort to build a CAS plane began in 1968, a year after the USAF began its own search.

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