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Source : Bulgarian Military
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| Russian Air Force Sukhoi Su-57 Felon 5th Generation Stealth Fighter (Twitter Photo) |
MOSCOW: When will Russia receive the first Su-57 regiment? Serious Western experts began to call it a “super fighter” and “the pearl of the Russian military-industrial complex.”
“In 2021, they produced only three serial Su-57s, in 2022 there were eight more, and now, in 2023, we are talking about ten, although Moscow seems to have fourteen in mind. If so, then by the end of the 2023 year they will have at their disposal a whole regiment of such machines, because each Su-57 is like three conventional fighters generation 4++ and operate in close connection with no less powerful Su-35, which to enter this “top”, only full-fledged stealth technologies are missing.”
This is what the German aviation magazine Flug Revue, popular and quite authoritative in aviation specialist circles, wrote in a recent series of articles on the operation of “fifth generation” aircraft. There, the prospects of serial fighters and multi-purpose aircraft, already in service and in operation, in which stealth technologies are fully used, were assessed. In it, the Russian “invisible” fighter was called a “super fighter” and “the pearl of the Russian military-industrial complex.”
.jpg "By the end of 2024, Russia to have 44 Su-57 Felon 5th Gen Stealth fighters in its Air Force 1")
Meanwhile, the Komsomolsk-on-Amur plant is undergoing revolutionary modernization. New manufacturing technologies and automated processes are being actively introduced to speed up production. Construction work also began in August on a new avionics test bed, a tank farm, and a new engine test bed, which plans to enter service in mid-2023.
The Russians are clearly about to go from a homeopathic scale of deployment to a rapid and significant increase. Production of 22 Su-57s is expected in 2024, and as a result, their number should reach 44 in two years.
The upcoming delivery of the next batch of Su-57s is expected this spring. And according to experts, this should bring their number of active troops to twelve. By the end of the year, they may already be more than 22, and their absolute majority will be transferred to the western and southern military districts, that is, they will become a direct threat to NATO and their unfortunate allies.
“The Su-57 has long been the most underrated Russian fighter. They were said to be far inferior to the F-22 and even more so than the F-35 in terms of stealth. But here’s what’s interesting. The Russians seem to have waited until the “childhood diseases” of stealth were cured and they would gain the necessary experience based on other people’s trial and error. Their “stealth” is clearly superior to the F-35 in maneuverability, range, and weapons range. It is unlikely that the Russians will be able to create them in such quantities as the Lightning II, but for them, this is and is not the ultimate goal,” wrote another expert from the American magazine NI, focusing on the range of weapons that make the Felon truly multifunctional.
The Su-57 is primarily an extremely powerful air-to-air weapon carrier. This is an advanced P-77 missile under the brand K-77, K-74M2, and hypersonic P-74M2 with an ultra-long range. Although the Su-57 is primarily designed for air-to-air missions, it also boasts excellent ground attack capabilities with the Kh-38 tactical surface-to-air missile, as well as a range of guided missiles from the KAB family. Finally, the Su-57 can also carry a variant of the Russian Kh-47M2 Kinzhal hypersonic missile, including those with a nuclear warhead.
For many experts, such agility in the development of Russian “stealth” was a big surprise. Until 2019, they called the PAK-FA project stillborn, in 2020 the Su-57 was derisively proclaimed the “worst stealth”, in 2022 it was reclassified as an “unpleasant surprise”, and now it reached “super destroyer and direct, and a clear threat to NATO”. Good dynamics.
The main thing is, according to local Russian experts, “is not to stop surprising our lost “partners”, otherwise it is better to remain in holy ignorance”.
