A Russian Su-57 Felon next-generation fighter sharing the tarmac with a U.S.-made F-35 stealth fighter is a truly unusual sight, and it has quickly become a signature image of the Aero India 2025 international airshow. With the Indian Air Force looking for new fighters, and with a complex path toward fielding its own fifth-generation combat aircraft, the rival jets have both been pitched, to some degree or another, toward emerging Indian requirements. However, it’s far from clear whether either of these advanced combat aircraft will be suitable, for varied reasons.
The first-ever such meeting on the ground between Su-57 and F-35A (two of which were sent to the airshow) occurred at Aero India over the weekend. The airshow is taking place at Air Force Station Yelahanka in Bengaluru, southwestern India, and is open to the public between Feb. 10-14.
At the opening of the show, the Indian Ministry of Defense published a statement that made a fairly direct reference to the presence of the rival fighters. “Aero India 2025 will provide a rare side-by-side comparison of Eastern and Western fifth-generation fighter technology, offering defense analysts, military personnel, and aviation enthusiasts valuable insights into their respective capabilities,” the ministry said.
Today, Rosoboronexport, Russia’s state-run arms export/import agency, announced that an undisclosed foreign customer will start to receive Su-57s this year, but provided no details as to that nation’s identity. The statement was made at the opening of Aero India by Rosoboronexport Chief Alexander Mikheev.
Since it was first offered, the Felon has not achieved any confirmed export orders and previous plans for India to acquire it fell apart in dramatic fashion.
As long ago as 2003, the Prospective Multirole Fighter (PMF) was planned as an India-specific version of the Su-57 (then still known by its T-50 prototype designation). This was intended to meet the requirements of the Indian Air Force’s Fifth-Generation Fighter Aircraft (FGFA) program.
Russia and India signed a letter of intent covering the common development of the PMF, in January 2003, followed by a related inter-governmental agreement in 2007, and another contract covering the preliminary design of the aircraft in 2010.
The PMF would have had various new and modified systems, compared with the baseline Russian standard, including an N079 active electronically scanned array (AESA) radar, derived from the Russian N036.
However, the project made only slow progress and was punctuated by some embarrassing incidents, including the fifth aircraft, T-50-5, catching fire on the runway at Zhukovsky, near Moscow in June 2014. This reportedly happened in full view of an Indian delegation.
Regardless, by 2018, India had left the PMF program, as you can read about here.
Nevertheless, Russia continues to push the Su-57E export version on the international marketplace. Last November, Rosoboronexport claimed that the first export contracts for the Su-57 had been signed, but, again, the buyer — or buyers — were not named.
When it was first launched in 2018, Russia claimed that the Su-57E version would be “significantly cheaper” than the F-35, although no numbers were provided. In 2019, a Su-57 was personally shown to Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan by his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, as seen in the video below, with the hope of securing Ankara’s interest in the Su-57E.
Otherwise, Algeria and Egypt have been identified by analysts as possible customers, although Russia’s ostracization from much of the international community as a result of its war in Ukraine has further diminished the chances of major international arms sales.
In India, meanwhile, the focus has been on the development of a homegrown fifth-generation fighter, the Advanced Medium Combat Aircraft (AMCA), although this is still a long way off, with the latest reports indicating it’s not planned to enter service until 2036. Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) has been officially working on the AMCA project since 2010 and, at one point, there was a stated goal of having a flying prototype by 2025.
In the meantime, the Indian Air Force faces the problem of a diminishing frontline fighter force driven by the retirement of older types, like the MiG-21 Fishbed — the Soviet-designed jet that was once the backbone of the service. This is compounded by a lack of movement on projects to buy foreign-made fighters as interim equipment, something that Angad Singh, an Indian defense journalist and contributor to this website, characterizes as “decision paralysis.”
Of course, the Indian Air Force would not have faced such problems had India’s Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) Tejas program, the MiG-21’s designated successor, not suffered such lengthy delays. Currently, the Indian Air Force still has only two operational squadrons with the LCA Tejas Mk 1 and this is, in many ways, a fairly limited combat aircraft — certainly when compared to fifth-generation types. Ultimately, only 40 examples are being purchased.
With that in mind, deliveries of the improved LCA Tejas Mk 1A are planned to start soon, allowing the Indian Air Force to finally dispose of its last MiG-21s. While more capable than the Tejas Mk 1, with more advanced radar, avionics, and weapons, the Mk 1A is still classified by the Indian Air Force as a fourth-generation type, putting it more or less on par with the South Korean FA-50, or the Saab Gripen, for example.
There are currently 83 Tejas Mk 1A fighters under contract, with plans to supplement this with another 97 aircraft, for a total of 180 Mk 1As.
After that, 120 examples of the altogether more ambitious Tejas Mk 2 are set to be delivered to the Indian Air Force, between 2028 and 2035. Classified as “generation 4++” fighters, these will be fitted with more powerful F414 engines and have much-improved performance as part of generally expanded capabilities. If all goes to plan, the experience with the Tejas Mk 2 should pave the way for the first of the all-new AMCA fifth-generation fighters to enter service in 2036. Currently, plans call for 120 aircraft to be procured under the AMCA program.
The AMCA will feature a low-observable design, including internal weapons bays, new-generation AESA radar, and advanced avionics, and will be intended, from the outset, to operate alongside drones as part of ‘manned-unmanned’ teaming concept.
Again, the AMCA is still a long way in the future and, based on prior experience, the program will likely face more delays of its own.
With that in mind, and with so many different moving pieces in the Indian Air Force’s fighter puzzle, the service also launched the Multirole Fighter Aircraft (MRFA) competition. This aims to select an existing foreign-made fighter, with a total of 114 to be acquired, through a combination of off-the-shelf purchases and licensed production in India.
Many might ask why India wouldn’t simply buy more Dassault Rafales, but when the 114-aircraft requirement was launched it was billed as being specifically for single-engine types, ruling out the French product. Since then, however, the competition appears to be wide open, with the F-15EX, for example, now also being offered to India, and with the Rafale and the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet also in the running. If India decides to procure another single-engine fighter, after all, the Indian-specific F-21 configuration of the F-16 is also a viable candidate.
On the other hand, with its emphasis on a ‘non-controversial’ procurement of more ‘generation 4+’ fighters in the same class as the Rafale, the MRFA competition doesn’t appear to have a place for the Su-57, or the F-35.
That brings us to the Joint Strike Fighter.
In the past, there have been tentative offers of the F-35 to India, notably in 2018, when the then head of U.S. Pacific Command supposedly stated that he supported the sale of the stealth fighter to India.
The U.S. government has still not technically cleared the F-35 for offer to India, although, as in the case of the United Arab Emirates, where the same was true, this didn’t stop the previous Trump administration from pitching the aircraft to the Gulf country.
It’s notable, too, that in the past Lockheed Martin hinted that India choosing its F-21 (essentially an advanced F-16, rebranded) might pave the way for the country to eventually join the F-35 program — although the company removed that claim from its official F-21 webpage shortly after it went live, as you can read about here.
For India, however, there is another potential sticking point, as Angad Singh explained to TWZ: “Regardless of political winds in the United States, our case for the F-35 is complicated by the S-400 and the hordes of other Soviet/Russian equipment we operate.”
It is worth recalling that it was the S-400 air defense system specifically that saw Turkey ejected from the F-35 program, even after the first aircraft had been built for the Turkish Air Force and with a significant industrial stake in the manufacturing effort.
So, while India acquiring the F-35 is by no means impossible, it would require significant negotiations, with safeguards and assurances that New Delhi might not be willing to agree to — especially if it meant giving up the S-400 or other high-end Russian-origin systems.
With that in mind, could that somehow provide the Su-57 with another chance to win an Indian Air Force order?
Singh is skeptical.
“The Felon, let’s be real, is probably the least-capable ‘fifth-generation’ fighter out there, and the least mature. Not a good combination. I don’t see the utility in it as a counter to Chinese fifth-generation developments.”
Putting aside the respective capabilities of the Su-57 and a growing fleet of stealthy Chinese adversaries, there is also the fact that the Indian Air Force hasn’t necessarily had a good experience in the past with Russian imports — especially in regards to after-sales support and maintainability. This is something that has only been exacerbated since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. “The last thing the Indian Air Force needs is another decades-long debugging exercise like the Su-30MKI Flanker,” Singh observes.
Once again, while the Indian Air Force is actively looking for new foreign-made fighters, neither the Su-57 nor the F-35 are really what the service needs and it has admitted as much in the past in terms of the aircraft that it has identified for the MRFA competition.
On the other hand, the Su-57 would appear to offer one clear advantage for India that the F-35 cannot compete with: the offer of local licensed production for the fighter, as HAL has done with the Su-30MKI. For India, offsets are an enormously important part of major defense acquisitions and the promise of technology transfers could also be tempting, especially as it sets to work on its own fifth-generation fighter program, the AMCA.
While the appearance of the Su-57 and the F-35 together at Bengaluru is certainly intriguing from the perspective of observers, it does also reinforce the urgency of the Indian Air Force’s need for new fighter equipment. With delays seemingly inbuilt for its various domestic combat aircraft programs, the need for interim fighter equipment is more obvious than ever. The Indian Air Force needs to decide on the outcome of the MRFA competition sooner rather than later. At this stage, however, the Su-57 and the F-35 both look to be outsiders.
Contact the author: thomas@thewarzone.com