The Su-57 next-generation air superiority fighter entered frontline service in 2020, making Russia the third nation in the world to do so after the United States and China. The United States introduced the F-22 Raptor into service in 2005, and China introduced the J-20 “Mighty Dragon” in 2017. The Su-57 made its first voyage in 2010, and the program appears to be largely focused on building an aircraft with sixth-generation capabilities. Future variants of the jet are anticipated to get orders far larger than those for the current fifth-generation variant.
The fighter underwent its first combat tests in February 2018 when cutting-edge combat-capable prototypes were deployed to Syria. The fighter is planned to integrate a variety of next-generation technologies, including hypersonic ballistic missiles, stealth coatings, laser defenses, laser weapons, artificial intelligence, and more. Although the Su-57 program seems to have a lot of potentials, it is only the most recent of several Russian next-generation fighter programs designed to replace the fourth-generation Su-27 Flanker. The Su-57 is the only one to have advanced past the early prototype stages and entered serial production. The Su-47 Berkut stealth platform was one unique project to create a fifth-generation fighter, which saw its first flight thirteen years before the Su-57 in the same month as America’s F-22 Raptor.
Uncertainty still exists regarding the Su-47’s potential for active duty in the Russian Air Force. There are hints that the Western Bloc did think about it as a possibility and anticipated the platform competing with the F-22 Raptor for air superiority in future conflicts. The Su-47 was only ever built as a single prototype, but it made its first flight in September 1997. The platform served as an invaluable testbed for a variety of cutting-edge technologies, including fly-by-wire and advanced composite materials, which later benefited both the Su-35 and Su-57 programs.
The Sukhoi design bureau started working on the plane in the 1980s, along with Mikoyan Buraeu’s MiG 1.44 fifth-generation fighter program and plans for an improved Su-27 that would eventually become the Su-30, Su-34, and Su-35. The Su-47’s prototype used the non-stealthy fuselage from the Su-27 due to budget constraints after the fall of the Soviet Union but recently obtained pictures show that the fighter was intended to be developed around a much stealthier airframe.
The Su-47 was renowned for having forward-swept wings, which set it apart from all other fifth-generation fighter designs. These wings gave the fighter an almost unmatched turn rate, and when coupled with thrust vectoring technologies, they made the Su-47 one of the best dogfighters in the world. A higher lift/drag ratio, superior stability at high angles of attack, a lower minimum flight speed, improved stall resistance, and anti-spin characteristics were all provided by the fighter’s wing design.
The fighter’s wing configuration also increased its subsonic range significantly and, thanks to the increased lift it produced, allowed it to take off and land on far shorter runways. The forward-swept wing design’s disadvantage was that it limited the fighter’s speed to just Mach 1.6, making it the slowest Russian fighter in service even if it was powerful for visual range battles and lighter than the American F-35A fifth-generation version.
However, this was not the only factor in the program’s abandonment, and it might have been justified in view of the significant benefits to flight performance. But the forward-swept wing design also caused wing twisting, which bent the wings under the weight of the aircraft and put them under a lot of stress. As a result, about 90% of the materials used to make the fighter’s wing panels had to be sturdy composites; nonetheless, even these would wear out far more quickly than the wings of normal aircraft.
To cut expenses, the Su-47 prototype borrowed the forward fuselage, vertical tails, and landing gear from the Su-27 together with the DF-30 engines from the MiG-31 interceptor. The Su-27, at the time Russia’s premier air superiority fighter, shared dimensions with the fighter, making it possible to reuse some design elements. The Su-47 was primarily built to perform well in visible-range combat, but it was also capable of firing sophisticated long-range air-to-air missiles, which when coupled with contemporary radar systems may have made it a successful platform for fighting beyond visual range.
It is still unclear whether the design would have entered production in the 2000s if the Soviet Union hadn’t disintegrated because funding for performance problems was much easier to come by during that time, and the Soviet defense industry was in much better shape than that of its Russian successor.