At the end of October, Russian will start producing airframe and testing of the Su-57 fighter. Russia has shut the production of Su-57 due to technical difficulties associated with the aircraft, Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu confirmed during a visit to the Sukhoi plant in Komsomolsk-on-Amur.
A source at an aviation plant in Komsomolsk-on-Amur reported that at the end of October 2020, the first production of Su-57 fighter (in fact, the first and the second examples of aircraft crashed at the end of 2019) will take to the sky after October 2021. At the moment, the active assembly of this aircraft is underway, after which the finalization of systems, painting of the aircraft will begin.
Russia can only manufacture one Su-57 in a year due to technological challenges, production facilities and funding which means that by the end of 2021 the Russian Aerospace Forces may receive one Su-57 fighter for testing purpose instead of the two promised, which is due to the fact that there were problems associated with the intersection of fuselage, as previously reported.
Experts, in turn, pay attention to two photographs in the assembly shop of the Su-57 fighter – one of them was taken in June, and the second in August.
“Despite the fact that Russia is producing one aircraft at a time, the assembly of the Su-57 is proceeding very slowly. Comparing the photos taken in June and August, it can be argued that in two months it was only possible to connect the parts of a combat aircraft to each other – this is indeed very slow process — in order to equip the Russian Aerospace Forces with the Su-57 combat aircraft by 2028, one fighter must be produced every eight weeks. but at the moment this period is 8 times longer “, – said the Russian expert.
Russia stil needs to fix flight control system, avionics and a production variant of AESA radar which may take longer to fully test even Russian Defense Ministry allocates additional funding for Su-57 project.
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