Two series Su-57 fighters for RF VKS
In the fourth quarter of 2021, seventeen new aircraft were delivered to the Russian Federation - Aerospace Forces (RF VKS), including two fifth-generation Sukhoi Su-57 Felon fighters.
This information has been provided in the report of the National Centre for Defence Control of the Russian Federation on 20 January 2022. The reporting of the Su-57s was originally removed from the text published on the official website of the Ministry of Defence (MoD), but later was confirmed by the TASS news agency.
The reason for admitting the Felon deliveries is probably the sighting of a new Su-57 with Bort No. 52 Blue having appeared in an advertising video clip of the KnAAZ (Komsomolsk-on-Amur Aviation Plant named after Y.A. Gagarin, a branch of PJSC Sukhoi Company) just a day ago.
The first series Su-57 (T-50S-1), serial 51001 and Bort No. 01 Blue, made its first flight at KnAAZ in early December 2019, but was destroyed in a crash at the final stage of factory testing on 24 December 2019. Flight tests of the second series Su-57 (T-50S-2), serial 51002 and Bort No. 01 Blue, began in October 2020 and it was officially transferred to the Russian MoD on 29 January 2021, now being a part of the 929th State Flight Test Centre in Akhtubinsk.
Scramble Magazine reported on the second series Su-57 in December 2020.
Based on the available information and video clips from the KnAAZ production lines aired by the Rossiya1 channel in 2021, we can assume that the following two Su-57s were transferred to the RF VKS:
The KnAAZ plant shall hand over another four Su-57s in 2022, three of them have already been noted, in disassembled state, in video clips. These are:
In June 2019, at the Army-2019 International Military-Technical Forum, the Russian MoD and Sukhoi Company PJSC signed a contract for the supply of 76 fifth-generation Su-57 fighters to the Armed Forces, including the first two that were contracted in 2018, with final deliveries by 2027.