On Friday, we were told that the state-run Sukhoi aircraft manufacturer successfully ran a test flight of a fifth-generation fighter jet in the far eastern city of Komsomolsk-on-Amur. The fighter jet did, in fact, make it up into the air, but it flew in such a dense cloud of lies that nobody can be sure exactly what they saw.
Does the T-50 PAK FA fighter— which journalists have incorrectly called the Russian Stealth — possess fifth-generation aircraft capabilities such as a constant flying speed of more than 2,000 kilometers per hour, a flight range of more than 5,000 kilometers, a low radar profile, radiolocation of distant enemy objects and long-range guided missiles? None of that is clear. Some sources claim that the onboard radio-detection system is still going through bench tests, and nothing whatsoever is known about its weapons systems.
Nor is there any information regarding the engine that is purported to propel the T-50 at greater speeds than its primary rival, the U.S. F-22 Raptor. Several firms engaged in backroom intrigues for years, repeatedly failing to put forward a reliable tender for the engine’s construction. In the end, NPO Saturn won the contract. And the first thing that the firm’s directors did was start telling bald-faced lies about the engine’s capabilities.
Both Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov have acknowledged that problems with the aircraft’s engine will take a long time to resolve. But on the day of the T-50’s maiden flight, the managing director of NPO Saturn’s Unified Engine-Building Corporation, Ilya Fyodorov, made a sensational announcement. He said the jet is outfitted with “the very newest engine and not an improved version of the Su-35 engine as reported by some media and several specialists. It fulfills all the requirements presented to us by the Sukhoi company.”
For the last 10 years, “fifth-generation jet” were magic words that gave military officials access to generous state coffers. It all began in the early 1990s when aircraft company directors realized that their industry had entered a major crisis. There were two possible solutions. One, they could either acknowledge that the old Soviet aircraft industry had died once and for all and that the only course open to them was to completely restructure manufacturing, learn marketing and make the sector competitive in a market economy. Or two, they could tell the military’s top brass of a miracle project that, if properly funded, would revive the entire aircraft industry.
All of the industry’s capital was put into the second option. Captains of military industry cheerfully promised the government that they would quickly develop a fifth-generation fighter jet that would not only give the country’s Air Force superiority in the skies but also guarantee export orders for future decades.
Things didn’t end there. The creation of the Unified Aircraft Corporation in 2005 was justified in part by the promise to build fifth-generation fighter jets. From the very beginning, there were fears that government officials were merely using the project as a smoke screen for grabbing the few profits that those companies were earning from foreign orders. It is worth recalling that Ilya Khlebanov, who served as industry, science and technology minister in the early 2000s, confirmed that the jet development project had a budget of $1.5 billion. In the 10 years since then, about $10 billion has been spent on the program.
Now the stakes are even higher. After test flights of the Bulava intercontinental ballistic missile have failed repeatedly, it has become a matter of principle and pride to show that Russia can put a fifth-generation fighter jet in the air.
With the embarrassing Bulava failures and the endless delays in demonstrating the new jet, the whole effort has come off looking rather comical. Scathing rumors have been circulating for years that Russia is fundamentally incapable of developing high technology products of any sort. Now, in order to silence the critics, the T-50 has made its maiden flight.
Although Bulava failures were hard to conceal, the authorities are hoping that they can do a better job with the T-50 by shrouding the project in a cloud of misinformation.
Alexander Golts is deputy editor of the online newspaper Yezhednevny Zhurnal.