Russia makes fighter jet change after Ukraine war woes - Newsweek

Russia's military said it received upgraded versions of the country's scarcely seen Su-57 fighter jet, the country's most advanced in-service stealth aircraft that has played a minor role in the Kremlin's yearslong war with Ukraine.

Moscow's state-owned United Aircraft Corporation (UAC) said on Thursday it had handed over a "batch" of new, tweaked Su-57 fighters to Russia's air force.

Russia's defense ministry confirmed it had received new Su-57 jets and referred to a "new technical design" for the aircraft. However, it did not say how many jets had been handed over to the Russian military and did not elaborate on the specific improvements to the aircraft.

Newsweek has reached out to the Russian Defense Ministry for comment via email.

Russia has lauded the single-seat Su-57 as its most sophisticated and difficult-to-detect jet, claiming it is a fifth-generation aircraft comparable to the U.S. F-35s and F-22s—although many Western aviation experts doubt whether it is stealthy enough to be in this category.

Russia's Rostec defense giant—which controls the UAC—previously said it would upgrade the existing Su-57 to add a "second cockpit" to control the number of drones working alongside the jet.

The state-owned conglomerate said it would infuse the Su-57 with "sixth-generation technologies," referring to advanced designs currently under development across the world to produce the next set of bleeding-edge fighter jets.

Sixth-generation jets will likely be the most expensive raft of aircraft ever built, and lean much more heavily on unmanned technology. These hard-to-detect jets will have much cheaper drones swirling around them, able to handle the most dangerous tasks—keeping the human pilots and the costly manned jets further out of harm's way.

But the changes described by Russian industry officials are unlikely to make Moscow a serious contender among the sophisticated jet programs the U.S. and other nations like China are pursuing, Western experts, including Justin Bronk, a senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) think tank, recently told Newsweek.

Moscow has used its Su-57 for long-range strikes in its war against Ukraine, but analysts quickly deemed its performance lackluster and Russia's appetite to risk its handful of coveted jets in Kyiv very low.

An unnamed Su-57 pilot quoted by the Russian government and by the UAC said the Su-57 "has already shown itself well during the special military operation," using the Kremlin's preferred term for the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine that began in February 2022.

The UAC said the new jets had completed factory testing and Russian Defense Ministry personnel had piloted the aircraft.

"The fifth-generation Su-57 aviation complex is the best aircraft in its class," UAC CEO Vadim Badekha said in a statement. "The unconditional fulfillment of the tasks of the state defense order for the supply of these and other operational-tactical aircraft is our primary task. Our specialists, in cooperation with other Rostec companies, are constantly improving production processes in order to ensure the necessary pace of aircraft production."

Moscow has been slow to roll out more of the Su-57 jets, production dragged back by the demands of Russia's continued war effort in Ukraine.

Russia had at least 21 Su-57s at the start of 2026, according to experts with the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS). Kyiv claimed to have damaged at least one Su-57 in June 2024, which Ukraine's GUR military intelligence agency said was the first time a Su-57 had been struck.

Robert Magyar, the commander of Ukraine's unmanned systems forces, said in early May of this year that Ukrainian drones had damaged two Su-57s in Russia's Chelyabinsk region, which borders Kazakhstan and is roughly 1,700 kilometers from the Ukrainian border, in a late April strike.

A Russian Telegram channel with close ties to the country's air force, Fighterbomber, shared an image purporting to show the Su-57D in May this year. The jet's prototype is in the middle of flight tests after a two-seater version first took off in May, Rostec said.

Russian media reported in July that a Su-57 had crashed near Moscow during a routine training flight. Russia's defense ministry said a training aircraft had crashed while taking off from the area around the capital but did not specify the type of aircraft and said the pilot had safely ejected.

Russia has used Su-57s to launch air-to-air missiles at Ukrainian drones targeting Russian infrastructure, according to Ukrainian media. This would mean Moscow is using its most cutting-edge jet to shoot down uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs) that sometimes cost as little as tens of thousands of dollars.

Newsweek’s reporters and editors used Martyn, our AI assistant, to produce this story. Learn more about Martyn here.

Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Ben Kelly and Anthony Murray.