..:: India Strategic ::. Military Aviation: Sukhoi T-50 completes first long-range flight

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Editorial

Sukhoi T-50 completes first long-range flight

Published: January 2013

Moscow. Russia's prototype fifth-generation Sukhoi T-50 fighter jet has carried out its first long-range flight.

The flight was carried out during the transfer from a manufacturing plant in the far east to an assigned airfield near Moscow, deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin said Jan 17.

"It is a serious breakthrough! The plane flew 7,000 km, making two landings, in Abakan and Chelyabinsk, on the way to the Russian capital," Rogozin, who oversees the defence industry, wrote in Twitter.

The plane joined three other T-50 prototype models at the Zhukovsky airfield prior to state flight tests, which are scheduled to start in March 2013.

The fifth prototype aircraft is being built at the Komsomolsk-on-Amur factory in Siberia.

The T-50, also known as project PAK-FA, first flew in January 2010 and was presented to the public at the Moscow Air Show in 2011.

The defence ministry is planning to finish the state flight tests of eight prototypes by 2015, so that they could go into standard production in 2016.

The T-50, which will be the core of Russia's future fighter fleet, is a fifth-generation multirole fighter aircraft featuring elements of stealth technology, super-maneuverability, super-cruise capability (supersonic flight without use of afterburner), and an advanced avionics suite including an X-band active phased-array radar.

India is buying 144 of these aircraft under a purchase and licence production arrangement, discussions for which are on.

IANS