Sukhoi Su-57

The Su-57 is the production aircraft of the PAK FA programme for the Russian Aerospace Forces (VKS), known to NATO by the reporting name 'Felon'. The programme's flight testing was carried out with the T-50 prototypes from 2010 onwards; this page covers only the serially built aircraft, whose figures must not be confused with those of the prototypes or of the derived versions. Manufacturing is shared between the Novosibirsk Aircraft Production Association (NAPO) and the Komsomolsk-on-Amur plant (KnAAZ), which performs final assembly.

The initial plans were far more ambitious than what followed. Under the 2011-2020 State Armament Programme serial production was hoped to begin in 2016, with 52 aircraft to be acquired by 2020 and another 150-160 by 2025, but issues and accidents during testing pushed the first delivery back from 2015 to 2020. On 30 June 2018 an order for 12 aircraft was agreed; the first contract actually signed came on 22 August 2018, at the ARMY-2018 forum, for two serial aircraft (T-50S-1 and T-50S-2) scheduled for 2019 and 2020. In January 2019 the Ministry of Defence still spoke of a second contract for 13 aircraft in 2020, but on 15 May 2019 Vladimir Putin announced that 76 aircraft would be purchased and delivered by 2028. That contract was signed on 27 June 2019 at ARMY-2019; The Aviationist describes it as 74 aircraft which, added to the first two, brought the total order to 76. Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu then spoke of 22 aircraft delivered by the end of 2024 and of completing the order by 2028 at a rate of 16 per year, while Deputy Minister Alexei Krivoruchko said the ministry planned to expand the order under the 2024-2033 armament programme.

Serial production began in July 2019. The first example, T-50S-1 (bort number '01 blue'), crashed on 24 December 2019 some 110-120 km from Dzyomgi airfield in Khabarovsk Krai, during the final stage of its factory trials, because of a control system malfunction (a tail control system failure, according to The Aviationist); it was the programme's first hull loss since the first flight in 2010. After the investigation, technical improvements were applied to T-50S-2 and the other aircraft on the line, delaying the first delivery by a year; Sukhoi reportedly changed part of its management and, according to the same source, may have had to replace the lost aircraft at its own expense.

On 25 December 2020 the Russian Defence Ministry announced that the Su-57 had entered service with the delivery of the first production aircraft to a regiment of the Southern Military District at Lipetsk. It was in fact the second aircraft off the line (T-50S-2, serial number 51002), which, because the first had been lost, received bort number '01' instead of the expected '02'. Russian agencies differed on where it would go: TASS said it was joining a Southern Military District regiment and that four more would follow in 2021, while RIA Novosti said it would first be tested at Akhtubinsk. Spotters photographed it during a stopover at Novosibirsk Tolmachevo wearing the logo of the Chkalov State Flight Test Center at Akhtubinsk. That initial batch was used for military evaluation, tactics development and crew conversion. The first operational unit is the 23rd Guards Fighter Aviation Regiment at Dzyomgi (Eastern Military District), with deliveries from 2023; it is colocated with the KnAAZ plant, which eases support, and that first regiment of 24 aircraft was expected to be complete by 2025. The overall plan calls for three regiments.

The actual delivery pace is reported in accounts that do not reconcile, and this entry does not arbitrate between them. According to Wikipedia, four more aircraft arrived by May 2022 and six in total by the end of that year; with a new production line opened in 2022, 12 were delivered in 2023, 21 production aircraft were in service in December 2023 (plus ten prototypes), seven more came in 2024 in three batches and another two in April 2025. TWZ instead counts at least six in 2022, more than ten in 2023 and only two or three in 2024, with 'around 18' delivered between 2022 and the end of 2024. Defence Security Asia spoke of around two dozen operational by mid-2025. In February 2026 Rostec announced a batch in a 'new technical configuration', with enhanced onboard systems and a new weapons configuration, without disclosing how many aircraft it comprised.

Before any production aircraft existed, examples from the programme had already deployed to Syria: on 21 February 2018 two landed at Khmeimim air base and two more arrived three days later; Shoigu said they had spent two days there, and the ministry later reported ten flights and the launch of a cruise missile, likely a Kh-59MK2. In December 2019 the Chief of the General Staff, Valery Gerasimov, announced that the type had once again been tested in Syria.

Over Ukraine, according to RIA Novosti, four networked Su-57s were used by June 2022 to suppress air defences, and on 19 October 2022 General Sergey Surovikin claimed air-to-air and air-to-ground kills, although no hard evidence emerged. British intelligence assessed in January 2023 that the aircraft were operating from Russian airspace and launching long-range missiles, and satellite imagery from December 2022 showed five Su-57s at Akhtubinsk. On 18 February 2024 a Su-57 escorted by two Su-35s launched a stealthy Kh-69 cruise missile. On 8 June 2024 a Ukrainian drone strike on Akhtubinsk damaged one and possibly two Su-57s, according to Maxar imagery. On 5 October 2024, according to GlobalSecurity, a Su-57 used a missile to shoot down an out-of-control Russian S-70 Okhotnik-B heavy strike drone. In 2026 Rosoboronexport officially claimed the Su-57's first air-to-air kill for the first time, with an RVV-SDM missile, and in May 2026 Russian media credited a Su-57 with downing a Saab 340 airborne early warning aircraft with an R-37M missile; that same month it carried out at least ten cruise missile launches over Kursk Oblast, the Sea of Azov and Crimea. On 23 July 2026 the Kyiv Post reported that a Su-57 had crashed during a training flight in the Moscow region; the ministry blamed a 'technical failure'.

The export version, the Su-57E, has its own entry.