It is all somewhat surprising that the Russians have not yet managed to break through Ukraine’s formidable air defenses and secure air superiority, given that they supposedly have something the Ukrainians do not: a fifth-generation fighter jet. The high-threat environment in Ukraine forced flights low in older aircraft to dodge enemy radars and surface-to-air missiles is exactly what fifth-generation stealth fighters were designed for. So where has Russia’s much-vaunted Su-57 been all this time?
Except for possibly firing some missiles from Russian territory, the Su-57-in NATO parlance, ‘Felon’-has been largely missing in action. According to Western intelligence and aviation experts, that hesitation reveals not just a lack of actual confidence in the aircraft that is said to belong to a new generation of stealth fighters. Former US Navy intelligence officer Mike Dahm said this decision had much to do with the prestige of the Russian defense industry and what that means for purchasers.
The twin-engine Su-57 is Russia’s first purported attempt at a fifth-generation fighter; it features the ability to “supercruise” without lighting afterburners and stealth capabilities to avoid detection. Some analysts have questioned whether it’s fifth-gen because, they claimed, some of the latter’s capabilities are lacking. According to Dahm, despite the Su-57’s aerodynamically clean airframe, thus optimized for dogfighting, Russia is still behind on low-observable technologies that would give it a high stealth covertness.
“The Russians haven’t hit their stride in terms of production of this aircraft,” Dahm said. “There are very few of them. They’re still working out bugs in this aircraft, and it is still undergoing substantial modifications.”
The first Su-57 was supplied to the Russian military in 2020 and there seem to be as many as ten in its arsenal. State media estimates put this figure at 22 by the end of next year, increasing to 76 by 2028. Russia says the first combat for the aircraft came above Syria in 2018 as part of the country’s support of the Assad regime. In May 2022, state media in Moscow reported that the fighter jet had been used against Ukraine by firing missiles outside the range of Kyiv’s air-defense systems. Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu later recounted in an August interview that the “aircraft has shown itself brilliantly.”
The British defense ministry wrote in an intelligence update in early January that the Russian air force has “almost certainly” used the Su-57 to conduct missions against Ukraine since at least June 2022. The missions likely included overflights of Russian territory, accompanied by the firing of long-range air-to-surface or air-to-air missiles into Ukraine.
There remains little evidence of Su-57 activity in Ukraine; if the warplanes have been used in operations, the act has been so sparing as to be normally inconspicuous. “There is a high likelihood that Russia is focusing on the reputational damage, reduced export prospects, and the compromising of sensitive technology which would result from any loss” in Ukraine, the British defense ministry said. This careful approach is further symptomatic of Russia’s continued risk-averse strategy in employing its air force in the war.
But the skies over Ukraine are highly contested; neither side has ever claimed air superiority because both have advanced air-defense capabilities, in particular, SAM. Because the combat environment has been so hazardous, it has made both Ukraine and Russia more circumspect with the airpower available to them.
The Su-57 has been touted by Russian state media as comparable to American fifth-generation stealth fighters, such as the F-22 and F-35. Experts say the latter, like the F-35, designed for air superiority and strike missions, is tailor-made for a threat environment like that in Ukraine. So why isn’t the Su-57 doing what it needs to? Quite simply, the plane might be nowhere near as good as the Russians say.
“Russian reluctance to operate the Su-57 near the front line, despite having enormous potential to benefit from enhanced freedom of action in the face of Ukrainian SAM systems, indicates a lack of faith in the Su-57’s publicized stealth characteristics,” said Justin Bronk, an airpower and technology expert at UK-based think tank the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI).
The technical problems besetting the Su-57 include, apparently, an inability by Russia to fit on body panels tightly enough to reduce the radar signature, and a lack of stealth-capable engines. Bronk added that the Su-57 is also limited by its current armament, which compromises its stealth signature.
The damage to the reputational and operative activities that the loss of a Su-57 would cause for Russian President Vladimir Putin is immense. “The PR disaster of a Su-57 being shot down by Ukrainian SAM systems is something that they are not prepared to risk at this stage,” said Bronk. Not only it would be an embarrassment to them, but it could also hurt Russia’s arms export business.
That is one way that foreign military sales support the supply of aircraft to the Russian defense ministry’s help in supplying those aircraft to its air force. The reputational hit a Su-57 would take if it failed, crashed, or was shot down over Ukraine would be a possible sales killer. According to a 2021 Congressional Research Service report, Russia had sold armaments to more than 45 countries and was the world’s second-largest arms exporter, second only to the U.S. Aircraft alone accounted for half of that sum.
Most widely, possibly these will serve to insert a bottleneck in Russia’s military exports. There is also a possibility of sensitive technology falling into the wrong hands. The Su-57 is a newly built jet, and to date, not much has been said, certainly not about its internal systems. It would be only a matter of time before the wreckage of such a downed jet, whether disabled by enemy fire or malfunction, would turn up in a hangar in a NATO country.
“There are certainly new Russian technologies in the Su-57 that the US and Western intelligence would be very interested to examine, allowing our air forces to develop countermeasures against whatever systems the Russians have built into the Su-57,” Dahm said.
It’s hardly the only much-hyped Russian weapon that has then failed to appear on any significant scale on the battlefield in Ukraine. Last month, for example, the military intelligence chief of Kyiv declared that there is not “a single instance” of Moscow’s new T-14 Armata tank having been used in Ukraine.