Russia’s light stealth fighter appearing at the MAKS 2021 exhibition has been revealed as the Su-59 or Su-75, Moscow hopes its fighter will beat the F-35 in the international market.
Excitement amid the emergence of data on the fifth-generation light fighter aircraft developed by the state technology corporation Rostec allows experts to assess the scale of the possibility of supplying this fighter to the foreign partner.
The Russian media is confident that even according to the most conservative estimates, in the future they can sell several hundred Su-59 fighters to other countries, of which India and China will be the main buyers.
According to Russian media, the efforts of India and China to activate their aircraft carrier fleet have completely failed due to the lack of effective and modern fighter aircraft in the arsenals of these two countries. With the advent of the new Russian fifth-generation light fighter, the cost of which can be in the range of 50-70 million USD, will help the two countries to actively develop the construction of aircraft carriers.
“Taking into account current trends, China can buy up to 100 Su-59 fifth-generation light fighters from Russia, while India can buy several dozen of these fighters. “Among other partners, Egypt, Algeria, Vietnam. could become key customers. At this point, we can confidently say that there is a need for light fighters of the fifth generation. Su-59 years can be measured up to several hundred units”, the Rostec representative emphasized.
However, the above opinion is in doubt, because it comes entirely from Russia’s subjective assessment, there is no sign of any indication that the Su-59 appearing at MAKS 2021 is a fightable version, instead of the model.
Russia is struggling to perfect the Su-57, while the Su-59 has a single-engine configuration and is expected to be a fighter jet, ie capable of short take-offs or even landings vertical will have much more complex technical requirements.
As for the Indian Navy, if it chooses a fifth-generation stealth fighter to deploy on an aircraft carrier, New Delhi is still inclined to choose the US F-35B or F-35C. These are all active fighters, the reliability can be assessed and the cost is also acceptable. Meanwhile, the Russian Su-59 still has an uncertain future.
As for the fifth-generation fighter, conventional land-based version, India is developing its own domestic AMCA fighter after scrapping the FGFA design in cooperation with Russia because it found that it was not good as expected. Also India developing another fighter jet TEDBF for aircraft carrier, which would be like to operational by 2026/2027.
Faced with this fact, it is hard to believe that New Delhi will choose a fighter jet that is still just a Russian model as the representative of Rostec Group confidently said.
The prospect of China choosing Su-59 as its future fighter is even more unbelievable when the J-31 they researched and developed by themselves has been ahead of Russia’s fifth-generation light fighter by a distance.
While the Su-59 is still a model, and capabilities are not known yet, the J-31 has been tested on land for many years, the time when it conducts test flights from the aircraft carrier is also coming soon, and the Russian fighter has not even clear when to take off.
Russia clearly has a lot of work to do to hope that the Su-59 can compete with the F-35 before thinking of usurping the US light stealth fighter in the international arms market.