Key Points and Summary on Su-75 Checkmate – Russia’s Su-75 “Checkmate,” a single-engine stealth fighter concept championed by Rostec chief Sergei Chemezov, is likely a “fairy tale” that will never enter production.
-Initially conceived as a joint project with the UAE, the program has failed to secure any international buyers despite a low-cost, $30 million price tag.
-The 2022 invasion of Ukraine and subsequent international sanctions have made the program unviable, cutting off access to necessary Western components and financing.
-With Russia’s own air force historically disinterested in single-engine fighters and its domestic industry struggling, the Su-75 Checkmate remains a fantasy.
Su-75 Checkmate: The Russian Stealth Fighter That’s Really Just a ‘Fairy Tale’
One of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s closest allies for decades has had a dream for at least a decade. The dream has been that Russia could design a single-engine lightweight fighter to be sold to and built with international partners.
The nations considered prime candidates include the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Saudi Arabia, Vietnam, Argentina, and India, among others.
The close ally is Rostec’s General Director, Sergei Chemezov. He served with Putin when they were both KGB officers stationed in Dresden, in the former Soviet-occupied German Democratic Republic (GDR). It is due to this longtime association with the Russian president that Chemezov has become one of the most powerful figures in the country.
Chemezov’s idea was to utilize the technology developed for the Sukhoi Su-57—a stealthy twin-engine aircraft—and apply it to create a smaller, single-engine fighter that could be easily produced in multiple nations and would be inexpensive to own and operate.
The answer came in the form of the Su-75 Checkmate, an aircraft proposed as a joint cooperative project between Russia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in 2017. An agreement on the two nations sharing the cost of the program was to have been signed at the November 2017 Dubai Air Show.
However, a last-minute announcement that Washington would reverse previous policy and allow allied Arab states—including the UAE—to acquire the American-made F-35 caused the finalization of the agreement to be called off.
Rostec and the Sukhoi Design Bureau continued to promote the aircraft, finally unveiling a half-prototype, half-mockup of the aircraft at the Moscow Air Show (MAKS) in August 2021.
A 1990s Concept
While Rostec presented the airframe as a completely new aircraft design, it borrows from some lightweight fighter design concepts originally developed at the Mikoyan Design Bureau years back. Some of their design studies date back to the 1990s.
A Russian aircraft industry specialist from Moscow involved in some of the older Mikoyan designs said at the time, “This Su-75 concept is now being credited to Sukhoi. But most of the serious work on this kind of a single-engine platform was actually performed at MiG long ago.”
The first live viewing of the Su-75 mockup occurred at the August 2021 MAKS air show. The two Russian aircraft industry officials presenting the program stated that the strengths of the Su-75 were that “today there is no single-engine, fifth-generation fighter available at a reasonable price. The customers we have been talking to want a non-expensive aircraft and one for which they can shape their own requirements.”
Cheap at that time, in their definition, was a unit cost of $25-$30 million per aircraft. The Sukhoi representative who spoke on this occasion also stated that this price point was what their target customers had said was the cost they all thought was affordable.
The Message on Su-75 Is Clear: It Likely Won’t Ever Fly
The February 2022 invasion of Ukraine by Russia has brought Moscow under an increasingly onerous sanctions regime. In 2021, the viability of the Su-75 program was based on international partners and the utilization of Western, imported components and technologies.
Moscow can no longer acquire those hundreds of foreign, imported parts for this model. Russia’s domestic defense electronics suppliers cannot provide sufficient substitutes as the plants that support the aircraft sector are closing their doors due to bankruptcies.
If these commodities being barred from sale to any Russian defense plants owned by Chemezov’s Rostec were not enough, then there are banking sanctions. None of the potential partner nations could engage in a program like the Su-75 under the international financial restrictions currently imposed on anyone doing business with Moscow.
If none of these obstacles existed, there is the fact that Russia’s Aerospace Forces (VKS) have consistently been disinterested in any single-engine fighter designs. Since the 1980s, every new Russian fighter concept that reached the prototype stage has been a two-engine configuration.
Speaking of engines, this aircraft was originally intended to be powered by a single-engine installation of the Su-57’s AL-51F engine, a design that has proven impossible to manufacture in large quantities. The same applies to the aircraft’s radar set.
Like the engine, this radar was supposed to be a new design that builds on the Su-57’s NIIP N036 Byelka radar set. The chances of establishing a production line now for that new design, which never existed to begin with, remain equally bleak.
Lastly, the economies of scale required for this program would depend on a list of export customers, which would likely not sign up to buy the aircraft if the Russian domestic military customer does not intend to purchase a single-engine aircraft. Weapon systems that are not “programs of record” do not sell to foreign buyers.
When the aircraft was first introduced in 2021, and Russia was not in its current post-invasion pariah status, the same colleague in Moscow looked at the design, surveyed the deteriorating state of Russia’s military aircraft sector, and simply said two words: “fairy tales.”
“That is what these people trying to sell the world on the idea that this is a real program are peddling,” he continued. “Fairy tales that can never come true.”
That is the current status of the Su-75, and it is likely to remain that way.
About the Author:
Reuben F. Johnson is a survivor of the February 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine and is an Expert on Foreign Military Affairs and Director of the Asian Research Centre with the Fundacja im. Kazimierza Pułaskiego in Warsaw.
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