Why Russia's Su-57 is BETTER (and worse) than you think

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Russia's Sukhoi Su-57 is among the most controversial aircraft in the sky today, with a small but ardent group of supporters hailing the platform as a revolution in Russian airpower, and most others dismissing the aircraft as little more than a failed experiment in stealth.

In today's attention-driven digital economy, it can be easy to fall into this false dichotomy, sorting all topics into simple upvote/downvote categories that fail to reflect the complex and nuanced reality of Defense technology.

So let's try to cut through the hyperbole to get at the truth of Russia's first foray into low-observable aviation, to learn not just about the aircraft itself, but about Russia's approach to advanced military technology as a whole.

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Citations:

[K_-_-_-_K]

The trouble is, T-72 turrets have more flight hours than this plane.

[hankadelicflash]

A Chinese lady taught me a great quote, she said, "Whoever jingles the loudest has the most change." That's so true, any person (or country) that actually has, and gets things done, doesn't need to brag.

[Herpter_]

The irony of having a discussion about a plane’s capabilities sponsored by War Thunder

[DrVictorVasconcelos]

One of the most hilarious things, I think, is when armchair analysts get a spreadsheet of new equipment from China and are like NATO'S NEW TANK IS ALREADY OBSOLETE. That's not remotely how any of this works.

[fmsracing]

Alex, thanks for ruining my ability to enjoy any other YouTube military channels. Your world-class informative videos have left me watching other military channels shaking my head saying, no, that's not correct; no, that's not correct

[Peter_Morris]

Regardless of its capabilities, you can’t deny that the Su-57 is beautiful. It has some fantastic lines. I still think the YF-23 is the king for looks from that era, but the Su-57 is darn close.

[coreytaylor]

*sponsored by Warthunder*
"this video is about theSu-57"
yeah, that scans

[garethcroson]

I've heard that there are so few Su-57's that the West has mostly only seen them on radar screens.

[AniMageNeBy]

17:41 With the exception, of course, that Russia has thousands of nuclear bombs and missiles. That's something, we, the West, seems to conveniently forget. Nuclear weapons are the Great Equalizers in any war. It doesn't matter how much other nations have equipment that is superior or not to Russia, at the end of the day, it's impossible to ever invade Russia without the risk of total annihilation for your own country.

There are only a handful of countries having nukes, and Russia has the most of them all. As long as it has those, nomatter how we might spin it, Russia remains a superpower, at least on the military front. As Stalin already said many years ago: "Quantity is a quality if its own".

It's also not much of a long shot to deduce that after this war with Ukraine, their military will actually be much stronger than it ever was for the last 3 decades. There are no absolutes, indeed, but the West has - much like the author of this vid - a strong tendency to both overestimate, but also underestimate Russia. This has always been the case, even before Napoleon, and even after Hitler. Yet, we, the West, ultimately always bit the dust when playing our hand against Russia, and claiming their technology was worse than ours.

[acarrillo]

Reminds me of one of my favorite Murphy's Laws, "Beauty maybe only skin deep but ugly goes right down to the bone."

[TheMitchyb]

It’s not even that the plane is trash (which it is) their problem is that even if the felon was the world’s best stealth fighter it still wouldn’t matter. Russia has no idea how to use it. And even if they did know how to use it, they still wouldn’t give their pilots enough training to make them proficient enough to use that tool.

[lionheartx-ray]

The Beginning sums up why I watch you. Nothing in reality is absolute.

[jmbaka]

I heard SU 57 got it's name from 22+35 (F22 + F35). It was touted to beat both.

[xivkya]

Its pretty much a flanker at heart and base just heavily modified into a "maybe could be possibly stealth" design

[videorowtv]

The RCS of just the body before the paint is applied is 0.3 m2 which is pretty good for what it is. The real RCS of both the F22 and F35 is much greater than advertised. The advertised RCS is from a very specific angle, in reality it's somehere around 0.06 for the F35. Also I should mention that the SU57 is equipped with L band radar so while it cannot effectively track the F35 at longer distances it can see it coming and react adequately

[benashbaugh]

I didn't know the Russians are ordering stealth fighters from Temu 😂

[stcredzero]

According to redditors, all aircraft's evaluation data can be reduced to 1 bit. It's basically, "Smash or Pass."

[RNdin]

"In real warfare, a cutting edge fighter can lose a fight to a cropduster...."
The math on this checks out. AirTractor makes an armed version of one of their crop-dusting airframes. No I'm not kidding.
I don't think it's gotten much interest, but it DOES exist!
Fit that armed crop-duster with a radar, look-down shoot-down system and the right air-to-air missiles, (ideally from another airframe so that they are already integrated with each other) and that high-speed low-drag stealth fighter might have a nasty surprise headed towards its tailpipe.
Doubly so because there's another kind of steath besides radar and thermal stealth. Stealth by visual mimicry.
No matter what gubbins they hang off the wings of it, that crop duster is still gonna look like a crop duster on first glance, and given the small windows for decision making in air combat, mistaking a missile-armed crop duster for one "armed" with pesticides or fertilizer can easily be the last mistake a pilot makes.

[alexandrnoskov]

Over the past week, the Russian Armed Forces have captured more than 30 settlements. And by the way, Russia never declared that it would capture Ukraine in three days.

[maddantt]

OH man, do you ever nail it there: "the internet hates nuance" !! --- and unfortunately that conflicts with the stark reality that almost nothing is ever 'black and white'. Even in the darkest of space, there are photons.