Sukhoi Su-57: Russia's stealth fighter

The Sukhoi Su-57 is a twin-engine, single-seat stealth fighter built by Sukhoi, part of the United Aircraft Corporation, with airframes assembled at the Komsomolsk-on-Amur Aircraft Plant. It is Russia’s first operational stealth combat aircraft, designed as a multirole fighter that can strike both air and ground targets. The Russian Aerospace Forces fly it from Lipetsk and from the 23rd Guards Fighter Aviation Regiment at Dzyomgi in the Eastern Military District, and Russia has reported using it over Syria and Ukraine¹.

Design and development

The programme traces back to a 1979 Soviet requirement for a next-generation fighter to enter service in the 1990s, the I-90 programme, which stalled after the Soviet Union’s collapse and was revived in 1999 as PAK FA, with a design competition announced in April 2001. In April 2002 the Russian Ministry of Defence picked Sukhoi over Mikoyan as lead designer for the whole development and production cycle. The conceptual design was approved in December 2004, and the first prototype, the T-50-1, flew for the first time on 29 January 2010 with test pilot Sergei Bogdan at the controls. Sukhoi and its partners built ten flying and three non-flying prototypes; early airframes developed structural cracks, which forced a “second-stage” redesign with more composite material and a reinforced structure, first seen on the sixth prototype. The aircraft carried the T-50 designation until it was officially renamed Su-57 in July 2017¹.

Stealth shaping drives the airframe: aligned panel edges, serrated skin joints, internal weapons bays, recessed antennas and radar-absorbent coatings all cut the aircraft’s radar signature, while serpentine, radar-absorbent-lined inlet ducts and blocker grids hide the engine compressor faces from radar. Sukhoi concentrated the stealth shaping on the forward hemisphere, leaving the rear fuselage less optimised than on American stealth designs such as the F-22; open-source estimates put its radar cross-section at roughly 0.1 to 1 square metre, about thirty times smaller than the Su-27’s. The airframe is a blended wing-body with widely spaced engines, all-moving canted stabilisers and thrust-vectoring nozzles that give it extra control authority at low speed and high angles of attack, built from a structure that is roughly 40 to 45% aluminium alloys, under 19% titanium and 22 to 26% composites, covering about 70% of the outer surface¹.

Specifications

The production Su-57 is 20.1 metres long with a 14.1-metre wingspan and a maximum take-off weight of 34,000 kg, against a normal take-off weight of 26,700 kg and an empty weight of 18,500 kg. It is powered by two Saturn AL-41F-1 afterburning turbofans, which let it supercruise at Mach 1.3 without afterburner and reach a maximum speed of about Mach 2, roughly 2,135 km/h. Sukhoi’s subsonic range figure is about 3,500 km, while its supersonic range exceeds 1,500 km, more than twice the Su-27’s; combat radius is about 1,250 km, and ferry range with two external tanks reaches about 4,500 km. The Su-57 is a single-seat aircraft, flown by one pilot¹.

A newer engine, the izdeliye 177, unveiled in 2025 and first flown in December 2025, combines technology from the current AL-41F-1 and the planned AL-51F-1 and produces about 11 tonnes of dry thrust and 16 tonnes with afterburner¹.

Variants

The base production aircraft is simply the Su-57, with more than 44 built as of 2026, including 10 test airframes, and series production continuing. The Su-57M, developed under the programme name Megapolis, is an improved version with upgraded mission systems and the new AL-51F-1 engine; the contract was signed in 2018, with flight testing planned for 2022 and serial production expected in the mid-2020s. An export version, the Su-57E, was unveiled at the MAKS-2019 air show on 28 August 2019; the first two aircraft were delivered to a foreign customer and in combat duty by November 2025, with visual confirmation in February 2026 — widely reported as Algeria, though Sukhoi has not officially named the buyer. A two-seat variant, the Su-57D, was announced in July 2021 for training and for controlling the S-70 Okhotnik drone, and first flew on 19 May 2026¹.

Operators and service

The first production Su-57 was delivered to the Southern Military District at Lipetsk in December 2020, after an earlier production aircraft crashed before delivery in December 2019, delaying the type’s entry into service by a year. The 23rd Guards Fighter Aviation Regiment at Dzyomgi in the Eastern Military District began receiving aircraft in 2023 and was expected to become the first fully equipped 24-aircraft regiment by 2025. Outside Russia, Algeria signed a contract for 14 aircraft on 27 December 2019; the first two Su-57Es were delivered and in combat duty by November 2025, with visual confirmation in February 2026, even though sanctions linked to the war in Ukraine have slowed export availability¹ more broadly.

Russia says it has flown the Su-57 in combat twice. In Syria, two aircraft landed at Khmeimim air base on 21 February 2018 alongside Su-35s, with two more arriving three days later, and the defence ministry announced on 25 May 2018 that a Su-57 had fired a cruise missile in combat there. Since Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, officials have claimed Su-57 missile strikes and air-to-air and air-to-ground kills, including a Kh-69 cruise missile strike over Luhansk Oblast on 18 February 2024 and cruise missile launches in May 2026 over Kursk Oblast, the Sea of Azov and Crimea; independent observers note that no hard evidence has surfaced to confirm these Russian combat claims¹.

Safety record

The programme’s early prototypes had serious fatigue problems, with airframes developing cracks during the MAKS-2011 air show despite a restrictive 5-g flight limit, which grounded the fleet for over a year for reinforcement. At that same show, an AL-41F-1 engine suffered a compressor stall and forced a takeoff to be aborted. The fifth prototype was severely damaged by an in-flight fire in June 2014 and written off, and the first production aircraft crashed before delivery in December 2019. In Ukraine, Ukrainian military intelligence claimed a drone strike on Akhtubinsk air base on 9 June 2024 damaged or destroyed two Su-57s¹ on the ground.

Similar aircraft

• Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor: the American twin-engine stealth fighter whose rear-fuselage stealth shaping Sukhoi’s own designers used as a point of comparison for the Su-57¹.
• Sukhoi Su-35: the advanced non-stealth Sukhoi fighter that deployed to Syria alongside the Su-57¹ and shares much of its design lineage.
• Chengdu J-20: China’s twin-engine stealth fighter, the other fifth-generation type currently in service outside the United States.