On Tuesday, December 24, the Su-57 (T-50) fighter crashed in the Khabarovsk Territory. The pilot of the plane survived, there were no casualties and destruction on the ground, said RIA Novosti at the United Aircraft Corporation (UAC).
According to the agency with reference to the KLA, the fifth-generation fighter crashed 111 km from the Dzemgi-based airfield during a test flight. In addition, sources in law enforcement agencies said that the crashed plane belonged to the manufacturer.
“The ejection system worked normally, the pilot ejected and remained alive. The cause of the incident will be sorted out by the commission being created. There are no victims and destructions on the earth, ”the agency reports the press service of the company.
The Ministry of Industry and Trade told Interfax that Oleg Bocharov, the deputy head of the department, will head the commission to investigate the causes of the incident. The department also reported that the crashed plane was included in the register of experimental aircraft.
The administration of the Khabarovsk Territory reported that the pilot of the crashed plane was found and taken by helicopter Mi-8 to the aircraft factory in Komsomolsk-on-Amur. “The fighter crashed during tests in the taiga, far from Komsomolsk-on-Amur,” a TASS source said, noting that the pilot was not injured.
According to unconfirmed reports, the crashed fighter was the first production Su-57, which was supposed to be transferred to the Ministry of Defense before the end of 2019. It is noted that the plane was insured. Sources also report that the cause of the incident could be “failure in the control system” or “failure in tail control”, black boxes are being searched.
As the former commander of the 4th Air Force and Air Defense Army, Lieutenant General Valery Gorbenko, told RIA Novosti, the crashed plane was checked according to special programs in extreme conditions.
“Each aircraft, before being transferred to the troops, is thoroughly checked according to special programs that allow us to determine the operability of all its systems. At the stage of flight tests of the engine, it is driven at maximum modes and angles of attack. It checks how electronics, air intakes and other systems work. All production aircraft are tested by factory test pilots who are serious professionals before being transferred to the troops, ”said Gorbenko.
- RIA News
- © Vladimir Astapkovich
Recall that the development of the Su-57 started in the early 2000s, and the plane made its first flight on January 29, 2010, taking off from the airfield in Komsomolsk-on-Amur. At the plant, the project has a factory code T-50, and the Ministry of Defense in 2017 assigned the designation Su-57 to the machine.
The aircraft is designed to strike at air, ground and surface targets. It has low radar signature due to the use of stealth technology.
For testing, a total of 11 prototypes T-50 were manufactured. In 2018, several fighters were tested in combat conditions in Syria.
Serial production of the Su-57 started in the summer of 2019. At the Army forum, it became known that the Russian Ministry of Defense signed a contract with the United Aircraft Corporation (UAC) for the supply of 76 such aircraft until 2028.
Earlier in 2019 in Russia there were several more emergency situations involving military aircraft. So, on December 17 in the Astrakhan region, while performing a scheduled flight, the Tu-22M3 bomber urgently landed. The Ministry of Defense said that the engine had failed in the car, but the crew managed to divert the aircraft from the village and put it on the ground.
The situation went without destruction on the ground, the pilots left the plane on their own after an emergency landing. Later it became known that the defense department plans to reward the landed Tu-22M3 pilots.
Two months earlier, the An-12 military transport plane made an emergency landing at Koltsovo Airport in Yekaterinburg. The incident occurred in October, none of the ten on board were injured. A preliminary cause of the accident is called a malfunction of the chassis.
Another incident without injuries, according to TASS, occurred in September 2019. The agency's source said the clash of two Su-34 bombers in the sky over the Lipetsk region. It is noteworthy that the crews of both aircraft managed to land planes on the airfield.