How Ukraine controls Western weapons mounted on Soviet fighters

The Ukrainian Air Force is using iPads or tablets in the cockpits of Soviet-era jets to enable rapid integration of modern Western air-to-ground weapons.

US Deputy Secretary of Defense William LaPlante confirmed this information on May 24.

Mr. LaPlante said: “Think about the aircraft that Ukraine has, they are not F-16s but Soviet-era or Russian-made aircraft. In cooperation with Ukraine, we were able to integrate many Western weapons and made them work on Ukrainian aircraft by letting pilots control iPads. Ukrainian pilots were able to fight one week after we trained them.”

Although there are still many questions about how exactly this method works, a video appearing on the internet seems to give some insight into the mechanism of controlling weapons using a tablet.

Accordingly, the video posted by the Ukrainian Air Force shows the inside of a Su-27 equipped with a tablet computer. This fighter is conducting many low-level attacks against Russian radars with American-made AGM-88 HARM missiles.

On the tablet, information about the navigation map is displayed. It is unclear how the Ukrainian pilot controlled the weapon from the computer. However, the fact that the tablet is placed blocking most of the control panel in the Su-27 shows that it appears to be used as the “brain” for the fighter.

In addition to HARM missiles, Ukraine also uses Soviet-era fighters to drop Western-made JDAM-ER smart bombs or French Hammer bombs.

According to The DriveWestern weapons mounted on the Su-27 can be used against targets with known coordinates, and they are pre-programmed on the flight path before the fighter takes off.

The pilot then flies the plane to the area, drops the weapon, and lets it fly toward the target using a GPS-assisted inertial navigation system.

The disadvantage of this tactic is that fighters will only attack pre-planned targets, reducing the flexibility of air battles. For example, in a confrontation, Ukrainian fighters will only be able to carry out intended attack missions from the ground and cannot launch weapons at new targets when participating in combat.

That is the reason why Ukraine has repeatedly wanted to receive Western fighters, such as the F-16, so that they are compatible with NATO-produced missiles and bombs, bringing greater efficiency.

In addition, it seems that in order to mount Western weapons on fighters such as the MiG-29 or Su-27, Ukraine also needs to adjust the weapon pylons to be compatible with missiles or bombs that are only equipped with for aircraft produced by the US and its allies.