Russia’s most sophisticated fighter jet, the Sukhoi Su-57, made its combat debut in the Ukrainian war.
A video emerged of the plane’s attack on a bridge over the Teteriv River near Jitomir, a city 140 km east of Kiev under siege by Vladimir Putin’s forces. at the request of sheetthree Russian military analysts analyzed it and said it was the first recorded image of a Su-57 in combat.
The action took place sometime from Saturday (5) to Wednesday (9). The characteristic silhouette of the plane, designed to be stealthy to radar, is clear. The armament for the ground attack, no, but they look like free-fall bombs.
It is a risk that Moscow takes. There are only three Su-57s operational today, in addition to another 11 prototypes that have been undergoing a grueling test campaign since the plane’s first flight in 2010. The first model for use had a failure and crashed before delivery in 2019. The unit cost is unfathomable, but export models are speculated to go for $40 million.
In 2017, two prototypes were sent to Syria for testing, but according to experts, they never fired a shot or fired air-to-ground missiles and rockets. In that theater of operations, unlike that of Ukraine, there was also no risk of attacks with anti-aircraft missiles.
Russia has ordered 76 of these planes, which face problems with the development of new engines. According to Western observers, they are so-called fifth generation fighters, that is, they have characteristics of design and use of materials that help them to evade radar, can maintain constant supersonic flight and have advanced data fusion units.
They claim the Su-57 is less stealthy than the American originals, the F-22 Raptor and the F-35 Lightning-2, although it is more maneuverable.
While the new multirole fighters do not come, the most modern model available to the Russians is the Su-35S, which also made its combat debut in Ukraine. There is no precise data, but reports that they have already shot down an undisclosed amount of the Su-27 and MiG-29 fighters, in addition to the Su-25 ground attack aircraft.
On Jitomir there was a rare clash between Su-35S and Su-27, which are the original Soviet model of the family known in the West by the designation Flanker, of which the Russian version is the most recent. The Russians operated 94 of them before the war, compared to 34 Su-27s for the Ukrainians.
There were setbacks, too. In addition to unconfirmed reports of the downing of Su-30 models, there are at least two Su-34 tactical bombers that were shot down by Kiev’s anti-aircraft missiles. The models are one of the gems in Vladimir Putin’s arsenal, widely used in less-threatening Syria.
On the other side of the air war, Russia also saw its dreaded S-400 battery, one of its most eye-catching exports, in action for the first time. While mobilizing nearly 200,000 troops for action against Kiev, Putin moved perhaps six of these batteries to the Belarus-Ukraine border.
Famous for being able to monitor up to 80 targets at the same time, the S-400 can have a range of up to 400 km depending on the missile it uses. Usually, it is within 250 km of the 48N6 missile, and thus easily covers Kiev — about 150 km from its assumed positions.
On February 25, the day after the start of the Russian invasion, one of these weapons brought down the Su-27 occupied by the notorious Oleksandr Oksatchenko, one of the most famous military test pilots in the country, an easy figure in air shows. in the West.
He was 53 years old, which says something about the availability of airmen for the government of Volodymyr Zelensky, who posthumously made him a hero of Ukraine. The use of the S-400 was confirmed by several Ukrainian and Russian sources and, if confirmed at a distance of 150 km, it would have been one of the most distant kills with ground-to-air missiles in history.
Like the Su-57, it was flown to Syria, where it protects the Russian airbase at Hmeimim, but there is no news that it was ever used. There, he seeks to collect information from potential adversary models with his radar, such as the Israeli F-35s — Tel Aviv, by the way, confirmed last week the first kill by the fifth-generation plane, of two Iranian drones, occurred in 2021.
The S-400s were at the center of controversy when Turkey, a member of NATO (Western military alliance), decided to buy them from Putin in 2017. At that time, Ankara was a participant in the US-led consortium to build the F-35, and Washington claimed that operating both weapons in the same environment would allow the Russians to know the vulnerabilities of the American fighter.
Of course, that was assuming the Turks collaborated with the Russians, and the mood soured. In the end, Turkey was kicked out of the F-35 program and is operating its S-400s. India, a traditional purchaser of Russian weapons despite the recent alignment with the US to contain China within the framework of the Quad group, is also expected to receive its models of the type.
Turkey has suffered some sanctions, and it is predictable that New Delhi will too. China started getting its batteries, which cost about $300 million each, in 2018, and the Belarus dictatorship wants to keep some.
