The long and troubled history of Russia's prized Su-57 fighter jet appeared to take another turn for the worse in recent days when what should have been an opportunity for the Kremlin to flex some military muscle turned into global ridicule and embarrassment.
The aircraft made an impressive aerobatic display during a demonstration flight at the Airshow China 2024 aerospace exhibition in Zhuhai.
Russia's official X account lauded the performance as "jaw-dropping," adding its "fifth-gen Sukhoi Su-57 fighter jet can do just about anything in capable hands."
But the triumph was short-lived. A flurry of close-ups of the parked fighter jet taken by members of the public suggested its build quality and stealth capabilities were suspect, to say the least.
Some far from hi-tech bolts and what appeared to be filler between panels prompted mockery on social media. Apart from aesthetics and safety, this would render the plane's fuselage detectable to radars, negating its stealth ability.
What is the Su-57?
The Su-57 was meant to rival the fifth-generation fighter jets of other countries, particularly the U.S. But despite a decades-long development and testing program, it has yet to prove itself.
Russia claims the aircraft has fifth-generation capabilities, which means it should have ultra-high maneuverability, supersonic speed without using afterburners, and, most importantly, stealth technology.
The plane has been presented as Russia's most modern fighter jet. Only a few units are in service within the Russian Air Force.
Sergei Shoigu, now head of Russian President Vladimir Putin's security council, said in 2022, while serving as defense minister, that the Su-57 has "shown itself brilliantly" in attacks against Ukraine. Yet, it has not played a particularly large role in Russia's full-scale invasion launched early that year.
An assessment from the British Defense Ministry in January 2023 said Russia's risk-averse approach to using the Su-57 was "symptomatic" of the military's wider approach to the war.
"Russia is highly likely prioritizing avoiding the reputational damage, reduced export prospects, and the compromise of sensitive technology which would come from any loss of (a Su-57) over Ukraine," it said.
Chris York
We asked aviation experts what they made of the Su-57s performance in China.
Greg Bagwell, former U.K. Royal Air Force senior commander
The close up view was interesting in that it showed a poor level of engineering workmanship that you would expect on a stealth aircraft.
Every overlap, every gap increases your radar cross section and there were plenty on view. It's indicative of a poor manufacturing and quality control process.
And we know that the real advances are inside a modern combat aircraft. If they can't get the simple external bits right then it's unlikely the internal systems will fare much better.
Dr Matthew Powell, air power historian and teaching fellow at RAFC Cranwell
What can I say that's publishable? It's not very good. This was meant to be the big unveiling of the Russian fifth-generation equivalent of the (U.S.-made) F-35, and it hasn't gone down as well as I think the Russians would have been hoping.
I think one of the big mistakes Russia made was that they allowed people at the air show to essentially get really up close to this aircraft. They want to take pictures. Those pictures have now appeared on social media. And they show the version that's been taken to the air show, perhaps it's not quite as fifth-generation as has been claimed by the Russians.
So it has done some sort of flight demonstrations and has shown its capabilities as a conventional fighter aircraft, and in that I think it's done a relatively good job.
It's shown its capabilities, it's shown what it can do. I don't think it's exceeded expectations but I certainly don't think it's diminished, or gone below the expectations of what was expected.
The way it's been assembled looks very slapdash, and there aren't smooth lines on the aircraft which is what you'd expect from a stealth aircraft to reduce that radar signal.
If you're looking at aircraft performance in terms of maneuverability, it can do the job that you would expect it to do.
But of course the problem comes when you're trying to maneuver in a hostile airspace where your opponent has got the ability to track you by radar. Okay, you can maneuver, you can do all of that. But you're going to put yourself in more harm and create more challenges to yourself by the fact that you're more easily seen by those radar systems.
So yeah, it's a capable aircraft. It'll do a very good job, I think, of what the Russians would want it to do in terms of perhaps air-to-air combat. But when it comes to the crunch, you're going to have to do this in an engaged, hostile airspace where things like radar are going to be widely used. And is that maneuverability enough for you to survive both as the pilot and to maintain the airframe?
Dinara Khalilova
Martin J. Dougherty, weapons expert and author of Aircraft, Tanks and Artillery of the Ukraine War
As with other weapon systems such as the T-14 Armata Main Battle Tank (MBT), Russia seems unwilling to use the Su-57 in its purported high-capability role. It has 'countered' the Patriot (air defense) system by using standoff missiles from outside Patriot's range, suggesting the operators are aware of the aircraft's weaknesses. Whether these will be successfully eliminated remains to be seen.
This situation is most likely an artifact of internal politics. Facing demands to present an operational aircraft, those responsible for the development of the Su-57 have cut corners in order to, apparently, give their superiors what they want.
Build quality issues can be addressed later, or the blame deflected once the pressure is off.
Peter Layton, associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute
My understanding is that the aircraft at the airshow was a tester, and so it wasn't of the build standard you'd expect. It was just a prototype used to try out and test things.
Also, it probably wasn't full of the guidance systems and electronics that you'd expect in an in-service airplane. It was a sort of lightweight, pilot-fun version.
Its aerodynamic performance was certainly sparkling, but probably doesn't represent what the actual in-service aircraft could do because it would be more heavily loaded down. And it wasn't made to the same build standards as the production models, presumably.
Having said that, the Russians' aerodynamics have always been superior to the West's since about the late 1960s. Western aviation companies had superior computers, so they could make anything fly.
The Russians didn't have all those computers, so they had to specialize in the mathematics of making the aircraft actually fly well purely as a structural issue and not be reliant on computers as much.
So, the fact that it performs well is probably no surprise at all.
Of course, this always brings up the argument that maneuverability is all well and good if you're doing close fights in a telephone booth kind of warfare. But these days, they standoff at 50-60 nautical miles (90-110 kilometers) and use their radars to shoot off long-range missiles at you.
So the maneuverability might be good for avoiding missiles in their terminal phase, but it's more of a trick for air shows rather than any practical combat value.
There's an argument that this was a test plane and it was built shoddily. The other argument is, of course, maybe they didn't want to send their latest and best possible build on the off-chance the Chinese perhaps learn something from it.
So they may have needed to ensure the industrial espionage side of things had been taken care of because air shows are places where all sorts of people get to crawl all over aircraft. So, from a security point of view, if you do have something sensitive, it's probably not the best idea to send it to one.
Oleg Sukhov
