Kiev
For more than a decade the world has been waiting for Russia’s aerospace industry to produce a fifth-generation fighter aircraft — a replacement for the more than 25-year-old designs of the Mikoyan MiG-29 and Sukhoi Su-27/Su-30 models and an analogue to the Lockheed Martin F-22A Raptor and F-35 Lighting II Joint Strike Fighter (JSF). Organised as a cooperative program involving almost the entirety of the Russian military aircraft industry, the project is known as the PAK-FA (Perspektivnnyi Aviatsionnyi Kompleks – Frontovoi Aviatsyi, or Future Air System for Tactical Air Forces).
The design bureau designation for the prototype is T-50, with this airplane in the beginning stages of assembly at the Komsommolsk-na-Amure Aviation Production Association (KNAAPO) plant in the Russian Far East region of Kharabovsk. “Metal is being cut at the KNAAPO plant” and the plan is now for the aircraft to fly in 2009 — or 2010 at the latest — said a source knowledgeable of the program.
