Key Points and Summary – Years ago, Russia pitched the Su-75 Checkmate as a low-cost, single-engine stealth fighter for home and export users: internal bays, modern sensors, and shared tech with Su-57 at a fraction of the price.
-Four years later, first flight has slipped multiple times, there’s no large domestic order, and sanctions complicate the very subsystems—engines, AESA radar, processors—that make a “fifth-gen” jet worth buying.
-With many likely customers locking in other fighters, the market window is narrowing.
-To survive, the program must fly a real prototype, lock a buildable baseline, land a sovereign backer, and prove sustainment.
-Without that, Checkmate risks becoming a glossy mock-up with no runway.
The Su-75 Checkmate Looks to Be In Trouble
By the late 2010s, Russia’s fighter roster was lopsided. Big Sukhoi twins—Su-30/34/35 and the nascent Su-57—soaked up money and manpower, but left a hole where a lighter, cheaper multirole fighter might live.
The logic for a new “budget stealth” jet was straightforward: give the Russian Aerospace Forces (and export customers) a single-engine, low-observable aircraft that costs far less to buy and fly than a heavy twin, yet carries modern sensors and weapons.
That would solve three problems at once. First, fleet economics: not every air defense regiment needs a long-range heavyweight; many sit alert close to home on modest runways. Second, export access: dozens of air arms want something more survivable than fourth-gen but can’t fund or sustain an F-35-class buy. Third, industrial politics: diversifying Russia’s catalog beyond Su-family jets keeps design offices and suppliers alive between slow-burn programs.
The Export Pitch: A “Fifth-Gen” Look At A Fourth-Gen Price
From its 2021 rollout, the Su-75 was sold as a stealthy single-engine jet for roughly a third to a half of an F-35’s price, with low operating costs and quick upgrade paths.
The target audience was explicit: Middle East, Asia, Africa, and Latin America—customers priced out of Western fifth-gen fighters or fenced off by politics. The concept also dangled co-production and local work shares, promising partners more than just a catalog purchase.
Su-75 Checkmate. Image Credit: Creative Commons.
On paper, a credible “low-end” stealth option could vacuum up demand: air policing, maritime strike, point air defense, and strike packages that don’t justify a heavy Su-30.
If Russia could field it quickly, the Su-75 would be positioned as the only exportable stealth fighter not controlled by Washington or Beijing.
What The Airplane Was Supposed To Be
Sukhoi sketched a compact airframe with internal weapon bays, a diverterless inlet meant to trim radar signature and complexity, a V-tail to reduce surfaces and weight, and shared avionics with the Su-57 to keep development costs down. The company’s marketing added the usual buzzwords: open-architecture mission systems, a modern electronic-warfare suite, and an active electronically scanned array (AESA) radar developed in-house. The engine plan pointed to the same next-gen core intended for later Su-57 blocks, promising better specific fuel consumption and more electrical power for sensors and cooling.
Strip away the brochure gloss and the thesis was sensible: austere basing, lower life-cycle cost, “good-enough” stealth, and a weapons/sensor stack that keeps the pilot tactically relevant inside a modern integrated air-defense environment.
After The Reveal: Timelines Started Sliding Right
The public arc after that splashy unveiling is the crux of the story. The Su-75 mockups showed up at air shows and on glossy stands, but the first flight date moved repeatedly—announced, delayed, re-announced, delayed again. Production targets similarly slid to the right. Each new pledge sounded confident; each year without a flying prototype made the gap between marketing and metal harder to ignore.
This matters for more than optics. Schedule is a weapon in the export market. Rivals locked in contracts while Checkmate stayed a mock-up. Pilots and maintainers never touched a real jet. Test cards that generate the hard, boring data—engine starts in the cold, radar fault codes in the heat, how fast line crews can swap an LRU—didn’t materialize for outsiders to see. The result: promise without proof.
Su-75 Checkmate and Su-57. Image Credit: Creative Commons.
Funding Without A Patron Is A Tall Order
Russia’s defense ministry never placed a firm, sizable order to anchor development. Instead, the pitch leaned on foreign partners: help finance subsystems, assemble locally, and jump the queue for deliveries. In better times that model can work; in a sanction-heavy, wartime economy it’s a reach.
Potential investors faced three deterrents:
Sanctions exposure. Joining a high-profile Russian program risks secondary sanctions and supply-chain blowback.
Unclear timelines. With first flight slipping, cash-flow risk mounts for any partner who needs near-term capability.
Opportunity cost. Export buyers can get proven fourth-gen upgrades (F-16V, Rafale, Gripen C/D/E, second-hand Typhoons) now, with financing and training pipelines that already exist.
The paradox is brutal: the Su-75 needs outside money to mature; outsiders want maturity before money.
Engines, Avionics, And Sanctions—The Hard Parts, Exactly
Modern fighters live or die on three invisible pillars: propulsion, sensors, and processors. All three are where Checkmate’s risk concentrates.
Propulsion. The advertised engine path leans on technology still being wrung out for the Su-57. Any slip upstream ripples into Su-75 timelines, especially for a single-engine jet that must clear tough reliability gates before test pilots push the envelope.
Radar/EW. An AESA is not just an antenna; it’s gallium chips, thermal management, power conditioning, and software. Sanctions complicate access to high-end microelectronics and the machine tools used to make them, pushing designers toward domestic substitutes whose performance and yields must be proven at scale.
Computing. Open-architecture mission systems need dependable processors and a stable software toolchain. If substitutes arrive late—or with lower throughput—sensor fusion and EW suffer first, and those are the very features that sell a “fifth-gen” brand.
None of these hurdles are unique to Russia. The problem is trying to clear them fast, cheaply, and under sanctions, without a large home order to amortize the work
Marketing Versus Manufacturing
The Su-75’s public face—sleek mock-ups, slick sizzle reels—has been constant; the manufacturing base behind it has been less so. Russia’s broader aerospace sector is wrestling with supply-chain gaps, missed production targets, and chronic dependence on imported parts.
Those structural issues, widely reported on the civil side, don’t stop at the factory gate for military programs. The lesson is old but sharp: you can’t PowerPoint your way past machine tools, skilled labor, and certified parts. Until fixtures, jigs, and processes exist for repeatable production, price and schedule are aspirations, not contracts.
The Export Problem: A Crowded Market Got Busier
When Checkmate debuted, the “affordable stealth” niche looked open. Four years on, many likely customers have moved. India doubled down on a mixed fleet outside Russia for its high-end needs. Egypt bought MiG-29M2s earlier and diversified further. Indonesia shifted away from Russian fighters after CAATSA sanctions bit. Smaller air arms lined up F-16V upgrades, Rafales, Gripens, or used Typhoons with attractive financing. At the same time, Chinese options matured for countries willing to take that leap.
To win now, Su-75 would need a killer value proposition: a flying prototype, credible test data, exportable weapons, assured spares, and state financing better than what Western treasuries and lenders offer. That bar gets higher each quarter a Checkmate prototype still hasn’t flown.
Why The Program Looks In Serious Trouble
Put the threads together and the picture is bleak:
No anchor order. Without a big domestic buy, suppliers won’t invest and unit costs won’t fall.
Slipping milestones. First flight and production dates moving to the right for years erode buyer confidence.
Sanctions drag. Microelectronics, precision machine tools, and financing constraints slow the very subsystems—AESA, EW, processors—that make a “stealth” jet worth the label.
Industrial strain. The same ecosystem missing civil output goals is tasked to turn a clean-sheet fighter into metal at speed.
Lost exports. Prospects have signed other deals, often with better financing and training pipelines.
Competing priorities. Wartime budgets emphasize munitions, drones, and keeping existing fleets flying over new boutique programs.
None of this says the Su-75 is impossible. It says the path to a credible, exportable product is narrow, uphill, and getting steeper.
What Would Have To Happen To Rescue It
There is a salvage path, but it’s demanding and public:
Fly a real prototype and show cards. Not air-show aerobatics—data. Field radar modes, weapons separations, reliability numbers, turnaround times.
Lock a baseline. Freeze a Build 1 that works with what can be produced domestically. Spiral upgrades later; stop selling vapor.
Land a sovereign backer. A named partner (or Russia itself) commits cash for squadron-scale lots, not hand-built samples. While talk of Belarus helping on the project might be somewhat useful, Moscow seems like it must take the lead.
Guarantee sustainment. Publish a parts and training plan with timelines a staff officer can brief to a minister.
Price honesty. Update that $25–35M sticker to reflect reality—and then hit it.
If those dominos fall, Su-75 could still become a workmanlike, low-end stealth option for a handful of clients. If they don’t, the program will drift toward the category that kills fighter projects: interesting, unfunded, and late.
Verdict on Su-75 Checkmate
Su-75 Checkmate promised the world: a stealth look at a fourth-gen price, quick timelines, shared tech with Su-57, and easy export. What it has delivered so far is missed milestones and mounting headwinds—no flying prototype in service, no big home order, and an industrial base under sanction stress.
The idea behind Checkmate still makes sense; the execution has not. Unless Moscow funds a real baseline jet, flies it soon, and proves it can manufacture what it markets, the Su-75 will be remembered less as a bargain stealth fighter and more as a case study in how programs stall when marketing outruns machines.
About the Author: Harry J. Kazianis
Harry J. Kazianis (@Grecianformula) is Editor-In-Chief and President of National Security Journal. He was the former Senior Director of National Security Affairs at the Center for the National Interest (CFTNI), a foreign policy think tank founded by Richard Nixon based in Washington, DC. Harry has over a decade of experience in think tanks and national security publishing. His ideas have been published in the NY Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, and many other outlets worldwide. He has held positions at CSIS, the Heritage Foundation, the University of Nottingham, and several other institutions related to national security research and studies. He is the former Executive Editor of the National Interest and the Diplomat. He holds a Master’s degree focusing on international affairs from Harvard University.
More Military
Russia’s ‘New’ MiG-35 Fighter Looks RIP
5 Worst Aircraft Carriers Ever
M551 Sheridan Light Tank Has a Message for the U.S. Army
M10 Booker: The Army’s Light Tank Disaster
The U.S. Navy’s Constellation-Class Frigate: Is It Beyond Saving?
Jeff S.
September 15, 2025 at 3:26 pm
Based on how much the SU-75 looks like a somewhat more mature Boeing X-32, I hope that whatever leaks existed in Boeing have been eradicated now that it is working on the F-47…