If confirmed, it’s only the second combat loss of a radar-evading warplane.
The Ukrainian intelligence directorate claimed one of its drones badly damaged, if not destroyed, a Russian air force Sukhoi Su-57 stealth fighter at Akhtubinsk airfield, in southern Russia 365 miles from the Russia-Ukraine border.
If true, it’s a startling blow to Russian air power. The Russian air force has acquired just two dozen or so copies of the twin-engine, supersonic Su-57—Russia’s answer to America’s Lockheed Martin F-22 stealth fighter.
The Su-57s are unproven—and have never actually flown in combat. If Ukraine really did destroy an Su-57 during the Saturday drone raid, it’s not only humiliating for the Russians—it could be a harbinger of more humiliations to come.
That the Ukrainians may hit a stealth fighter nearly 400 miles from the front line of Russia’s wider war on Ukraine strongly implies that Russia’s air defenses are spread so thin by Ukraine’s escalating drone campaign that they can’t protect all of the Kremlin’s most valuable assets.
