MOSCOW, December 21. /TASS/. The Russian Armed Forces will receive 94 aircraft and helicopters before 2025 ahead of schedule, including 22 Su-57 fifth-generation fighters, Russia’s Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said at the ministry’s enlarged board meeting on Monday.
"With regard to aircraft, the early deliveries of 94 planes and helicopters are envisaged by the end of 2024, including 22 Su-57 fighters, whose number will grow to 76 by 2028," the defense minister pointed out.
Head of the state tech corporation Rostec Sergei Chemezov announced on December 7 that the first serial-produced Su-57 fighter with the first-stage engine would arrive for Russia’s Aerospace Force by late 2020 while the first Su-57s with the advanced second-stage engine would be assembled in 2022.
The Su-57 is a fifth-generation multirole fighter designed to destroy all types of air, ground and naval targets. The Su-57 fighter jet features stealth technology with the broad use of composite materials, is capable of developing supersonic cruising speed and is furnished with the most advanced onboard radio-electronic equipment, including a powerful onboard computer (the so-called electronic second pilot), the radar system spread across its body and some other innovations, in particular, armament placed inside its fuselage.
The Su-57 took to the skies for the first time on January 29, 2010. Compared to its predecessors, the Su-57 combines the functions of an attack plane and a fighter jet while the use of composite materials and innovation technologies and the fighter’s aerodynamic configuration ensure the low level of radar and infrared signature.
The plane’s armament will include, in particular, hypersonic missiles. The fifth-generation fighter jet has been successfully tested in combat conditions in Syria.