LONDON—A Russian try to function its Sukhoi S-70 Okhotnik uncrewed fight air car (UCAV) in proximity to or over Ukraine seems to have backfired spectacularly.
Video and imagery from Ukraine printed Oct. 5 seems to point out the secretive, tailless UCAV being engaged and shot down by its fighter escort and certain command-and-control platform, with the wreckage falling onto Ukrainian territory within the Donetsk area.
According to reviews from Russian networks resembling Telegram, the plane—both the primary serial manufacturing instance or certainly one of three prototypes—suffered a management failure, prompting the pilot of the fighter to intentionally shoot the UCAV down. It was not clear if the failure was brought on by a methods error or Ukrainian subterfuge.
Still photos present the plane wreckage being secured by Ukrainian troops. Portions of the fuselage, wings and NPO Saturn AL-41F1 engine survived the crash intact. The standing of the plane’s very important mission methods and avionics couldn't be assessed in imagery of the wreckage.
It is probably going the wreckage can be taken away for shut examination by Ukrainian engineers, and later their counterparts from NATO nations. But the quantity of intelligence that may be gleaned is unclear provided that a lot of the middle part of the plane, together with the engine, burst into flames on impression with the bottom.
The Okhotnik—Russian for “Hunter”—is a heavy fight unmanned car designed as a loyal wingman for the Sukhoi Su-57 fighter. Weighing in at round 20 metric tons, it is among the largest UCAVs ever developed, and is powered by a single Saturn AL-41F1 engine—a non-afterburning model of the Su-57 powerplant. The UCAV carries weapons in two inner bays, with comparable armament to the Su-57. A video in 2019 confirmed the S-70 launching a 500-kg bomb from an inner bay.
It is unclear whether or not it was an Su-57 that shot down the UCAV, though the duo had been designed to function as a pair, with the latter anticipated to designate harmful targets, resembling air protection complexes, for the previous.
Russia is believed to have beforehand used the Su-57 within the Ukrainian theater of operations, in addition to over Syria.
There has been no formal acknowledgment of the lack of the Okhotnik by the Russian authorities. But the Fighterbomber Telegram feed run by an knowledgeable Russian observer of the nation’s air pressure operations stated: “It is difficult to understand what happened to the UAV, because it fell on territory controlled by Ukrainians.
“They will take it apart down to the smallest screw and of course get acquainted with its rich internal contents,” the Telegram put up added.
Only a handful of the secretive Okhotnik UCAVs have been produced, and the platform had been marketed as a excessive level of Russian protection aerospace achievements lately.
The lack of the plane and the wreckage falling into Ukrainian fingers is a big embarrassment and will set this system again years given the shortage of entry to the wreckage to grasp what might need gone fallacious.
The gradual tempo of this system lately suggests it might have been placed on the again burner, given Russia’s extra fast give attention to battlefield gear and smaller tactical drones for the continued battles in Eastern Ukraine.
As with Western militaries, the modernization focus of the Russian air pressure has shifted towards smaller, autonomous tactical plane. In August, St. Petersburg-based Kronstadt unveiled a brand new model of the Grom autonomous wingman, changing a posh, stealthy airframe with a traditional fuselage optimized for supersonic velocity.
The Okhotnik, in contrast, entered improvement in 2009, solely three years after the canceled DARPA Joint Unmanned Combat Air Systems program, a equally heavy UCAV. By the time Sukhoi accomplished first flight of the S-70 prototype in 2019, the U.S. navy’s focus had shifted to fielding portions of smaller, cheaper autonomous plane, now known as Collaborative Combat Aircraft.
– With Steve Trimble in Washington
