Russia is trying to upgrade its scarcely seen Su-57 fighter jet into one with "sixth-generation technologies," but the touted changes are unlikely to make Moscow a serious contender among the sophisticated jet programs the United States and other nations like China are pursuing. Russia has touted the single-seat Su-57 as its most advanced in-service stealth fighter jet and claims it is a fifth-generation aircraft comparable to the U.S. But Western experts say the Su-57 lacks some features of this generation of jets, like being difficult to detect on radar.
An upgraded version, the Su-57D, will have a "second cockpit" to control the number of drones working alongside the jet, Russia's Rostec defense giant said in a statement posted to social media on Monday. The U.S. and China are among the countries now sketching out sixth-generation designs, which are expected to start coming into service in the next decade. Meanwhile, the United Kingdom's joint venture with Italy and Japan has attracted Canadian attention and piqued the interest of countries like Saudi Arabia and Germany after a separate European sixth-generation initiative, dubbed FCAS, collapsed in June.
Sixth-generation jets will likely be the most expensive raft of aircraft ever built, and lean much more heavily on unmanned technology. These hard-to-detect jets will have much cheaper drones swirling around them, able to handle the most dangerous tasks—keeping the human pilots and the costly manned jets further out of harm's way. The Su-57D will use the specially developed large Okhotnik drone, which first carried out test flights with the Su-57 in 2019, according to Russian authorities and state news agency Tass.
Russia has used its Su-57 for long-range operations in its war against Ukraine, but Western analysts quickly deemed its performance lackluster and Russia's appetite to risk its handful of coveted jets in Ukraine very low. Moscow has been slow to roll out more of the Su-57 jets, production dragged back by the demands of Russia's continued war effort in Ukraine. A Russian Telegram channel with close ties to the country's air force, Fighterbomber, shared an image purporting to show the Su-57D in May this year.
The jet's prototype is in the middle of flight tests after a two-seater version first took off in May, Rostec said. But it's very unlikely Russia would be able to switch an Su-57 design into a viable sixth-generation jet, said Justin Bronk, a senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) think tank in London. The designs emerging for sixth-generation jets are worlds apart from fifth-generation aircraft; they're much larger, intended to fly much longer and carry many more weapons in internal bays, Bronk told Newsweek.
The Su-57D may have more up-to-date avionics, or it could simply be a two-seater iteration of the existing plane, he said. Either way, Bronk added, it's being built with export orders to countries like India in mind. "They're desperate for exports," he said.
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