Russia's first all-new warplane since the fall of the Soviet Union will make its maiden flight before the end of the year, a senior official said today.
"The prime minister (Vladimir Putin) visited today a section of the aircraft factory where he saw fifth-generation warplanes at the final stage of assembly," Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov told journalists in Komsomolsk in Russia's Far East, where the Sukhoi military and civilian aircraft maker is based.
"Before the end of the year, this plane will take to the sky."
He gave no further details, and journalists were not admitted to the top-secret part of the factory assembling the jet as Putin visited it.
Russia's military programmes are notorious for delays but if the new Sukhoi warplane does fly this year, it will be the first foreign aircraft to challenge the much-publicised U.S. fifth-generation F-22 "Raptor" jet fighter.
A military commentator for Russia's RIA state news agency said last month that both India and Brazil could be closely involved in Russia's plans to build a fifth-generation jet that would be multi-functional, all-weather and day-and-night.
Other features of the fifth-generation jet, which the Soviet Union first conceived in the 1980s but was developed from scratch in the early years of this century, are its increased manoeuvrability, its invisibility to all kinds of radar, and its ability to take off and land on short runways.
Russia, engaged in a major reform of its armed forces, badly needs to update its weaponry to fight modern, hi-tech wars.
As well as the all-new jet, Ivanov promised that production of existing Soviet-designed fighters would be stepped up.
"It was agreed that the Defence Ministry would increase its orders for Su-27s and Su-30s by several dozens (of units) in three years," Ivanov told journalists.
In the 1980s, the introduction of the Sukhoi Su-27 fighter, codenamed "Flanker-B" by NATO, put the Soviet Union and its communist allies at the level of the U.S. F-15 and F-16 jets.
The Su-30, known as "Flanker-C" to NATO, is a more formidable version of the Su-27. It made its first flight in the days of the Soviet Union but was introduced to service in post-communist Russia in 1996.