Su-57 Felon: Exposed Screws, a Tarmac Drone Strike and a Downed Okhotnik

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Russia's Sukhoi Su-57, called the Felon by NATO, drew mockery at the Zhuhai Air Show in China when visitors photographed ordinary visible screws on its panels. The jet began with the PAK FA program in 1999, when Russia could afford only one fifth-generation fighter to replace aging MiG-29s and Su-27s. Sukhoi beat Mikoyan's single-engine pitch partly because export sales of upgraded Su-27s to China and India had given it the cash. The resulting twin-engine design had to be a true multirole fighter with two tandem internal weapons bays, thrust-vectoring nozzles for moves like Pugachev's Cobra, and stealth focused on the front rather than all aspects, plus side-looking cheek radars that let it keep a lock while beaming.

India, which signed a 2007 joint venture for a variant called the FGFA and was to invest about $6 billion, walked away in 2018 over engines, stealth and cost. Early prototypes developed structural cracks, forcing a redesign that pushed normal takeoff weight to nearly 27 tons, and in December 2019 the first serial production jet crashed on a factory test flight; the pilot ejected. Sanctions cut off Western processors and gallium nitride radar modules. In Ukraine the jets mostly fire long-range missiles from Russian airspace, yet one was hit by a Ukrainian drone while parked in June 2024, and in October 2024 an Su-57 pilot shot down an S-70 Okhotnik drone after its data link failed.

• The episode explains that the screwed-together aircraft shown abroad were early test articles, not finished serial production jets.
• The Su-57 uses a quadruple redundant digital fly-by-wire system because its airframe is aerodynamically unstable by design.
• Russian doctrine expects the jet to operate under ground-based air defenses such as the S-400, covering its weak rear aspect.
• Two prototypes deployed briefly to Syria in 2018, firing cruise missiles in relatively permissive airspace.
• Algeria is reported to be receiving the first export Su-57s, aiming for operational status around 2026.