Why Russia Didn’t Deploy Su-57 Stealth Fighter Jets in the Ukraine War?

MOSCOW – War Russia in Ukraine has entered its 76th day on Tuesday (10/5/2022). However, Moscow has never deployed its most advanced military aircraft, Su-57 stealth fighter jet for combat missions.

Moscow’s military claims it has seized control of Ukrainian airspace. However, the United States Department of Defense (US) or the Pentagon, which supports Kiev, reject the claim.

Since the beginning of the invasion, Russia was predicted to be easy to achieve air superiority over Ukraine, given the number and sophistication of the Air Force it has.

Website Global Firepower reported a large difference in air power between Russia and Ukraine. Kiev reportedly operates 69 fighters, while Moscow operates 772 fighters.

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Moscow is known to operate a sizable fleet of 4th generation fighter jets and of course already produces the 5th generation Su-57 stealth fighter. However, the Pentagon is still reporting that the airspace over Ukraine is still being contested.

“This is still highly contested airspace,” the Pentagon official said, speaking on condition of anonymity, according to the military’s website Warrior Waven.

Initially, there were several well-known and widely discussed reasons for this, including Ukraine’s persistence in resisting Russian attacks and, perhaps most notably, the success of Ukrainian air defenses. This is perhaps one of the main reasons why senior Pentagon officials say Russian aircraft don’t spend much time in Ukrainian airspace.

“They don’t spend much time in Ukrainian airspace. They were as close as they needed to be to reach, drop, and now that they had dropped more dumb bombs, they needed to be closer. And then they send their payload and they come back. And they went back to Russia,” the Pentagon official continued.

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