According to the Russian Defense Ministry, a Su-57 is said to have crashed on Tuesday, December 24 near its base in Komsomolsk-on-Amur, in the far east of the country near the North Korean and Chinese borders. The pilot reportedly ejected and landed without injury.
According to the first information available, the drift control system of the aircraft, which was carrying out a test flight around a hundred kilometers from its base, encountered problems which made the aircraft uncontrollable, forcing the pilot to eject. . A commission of inquiry was immediately created by the Ministry of Defense to determine the exact causes of this crash. It is unclear whether the lost aircraft was one of the T-50 prototypes used for testing, or one of the two pre-production aircraft due to be delivered soon.
This is a hard blow for the Russian 5th generation fighter program which, after a difficult start, had managed in recent years to re-establish its image on the international scene, to the point of arousing the interest of several nations, Turkey in the lead. . President Putin this year announced an order for 76 production units to be delivered by 2028.
Update 24/12/2019 13:00 p.m.: According to the site Kommersant, the destroyed aircraft would be the first pre-production aircraft. However, the information remains to be confirmed.