When the Su-25 was designed, Soviet fighter development was obsessed with speed and altitude — the MiG-25 could touch Mach 2.8. Close air support was an afterthought handed to fast jets and helicopters that were ill-suited to it. Lessons from the 1967 and 1973 Arab-Israeli wars, and a hard look back at the Il-2’s wartime record, convinced Soviet planners they needed a slow, heavily protected aircraft that could see the battlefield, take hits and stay overhead. The result deliberately traded speed for armour, endurance and a punishing weapons load — the same bargain the Americans struck with the A-10. Both aircraft proved that, for supporting troops in contact, survivability matters more than raw performance.

The Su-25 and the American A-10 Thunderbolt II were designed at the same time, on opposite sides of the Iron Curtain, to solve the same problem: how to keep a slow, heavily armoured aircraft alive over a battlefield thick with anti-aircraft fire. They ended up different in emphasis. The A-10 is larger, longer-ranged and built around its huge 30 mm GAU-8 tank-killing cannon. The Su-25 is smaller, faster and lighter, closer to a fast jet in feel, with its firepower spread across cannon and a heavy load of rockets and bombs. Both wrap the pilot in a titanium bath, both can absorb astonishing damage, and both have outlived every prediction of their retirement. They are the two definitive close-support jets of the age.

The Su-25 came of age over Afghanistan, where nearly 50 aircraft flew tens of thousands of sorties as the Soviet army’s primary close-support jet. It was effective — and increasingly vulnerable once the mujahideen received US-supplied FIM-92 Stinger shoulder-fired missiles from 1986. Around two dozen were lost in combat over the war. The heat-seeking threat drove a series of changes: more flare dispensers, extra shielding and fireproofing between and around the engines, and steel plates to protect fuel and control lines. Those hard lessons in surviving man-portable missiles were built into later Su-25s and shape how the aircraft is still flown today, hugging the ground to stay below the missile threat.

The Su-25 was a Soviet state product, built in Tbilisi and issued to air forces rather than sold on an open dollar market, so a firm flyaway price simply does not exist in the public record. Export and second-hand deals over the decades have ranged from a few million dollars for used airframes upward, but these reflect condition, upgrades and politics as much as any list price. No credible cost-per-flight-hour figure exists in open sources either. Any precise dollar number attached to a Su-25 should be read as an estimate, not a sourced fact.