Russia lost another SU-57 “stealth fighter” just outside of Moscow last Friday. This is the second time that an SU-57 has crashed, which doesn’t sound like much until you realize that only 32 of them, at most, actually exist.
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Russia just can’t keep up when it comes to high tech. That’s always been the case. But today, in an age when progress in numerous technologies is reaching a crescendo in development, this makes for a bad sign.
Sukhoi produces about six to seven SU-57s a year. What this means is that the aircraft is essentially hand-made. Russian factory workers are putting it together piece by piece, as if the industrial revolution never occurred and we were still using the techniques of the Renaissance.
For purposes of comparison, 1,340 of the F-35 Lightning II, the current most advanced Western fighter, have been produced. This despite the F-35 going into full-rate production only two years ago. The F-35 has come in for a lot of criticism, some of it justified, though nowhere near as much as the legacy media would have you believe. But that number speaks for itself. The F-35 is an aircraft designed on the absolute cutting edge of several technologies — aeronautical, electronic, and cybernetic, and is in truth an actual stealth airplane, unlike the SU-57, which is at best kind of, in a way, sort of stealth.
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A lot of rumors are blazing across the Net about the crash, chief among them a claim that it was shot down by Moscow’s anti-drone air defenses. Be that as it may, one report that’s not a rumor at all is that the pilot is in custody for “violation of flight rules or preparation for a flight.” That’s right; Russia actually has a law against this – Article 351 of the Russian Criminal Code. In truth, this has all the signs of a legal cover-up, making the pilot the scapegoat … for what? Lousy maintenance? Poor discipline? Lack of oversight? It could be any of those things, but considering the record, it’s more likely than not an effort to mask a poorly designed and badly constructed airplane. (For the record, the only SU-57 buyer apart from Russia is the aviation giant Algeria.)
The SU-57 was put forward as the fighter that could outfly anything in the West. Today, after over 20 years of development and seven years of plodding, slow-motion production, it comes across as one more sign that mighty Russia is going down the tubes.
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Image: Anna Zvereva