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Russia Says Its Two-Seat Su-57 Will Fly Combat AI

On 14 August 2026 the Russian state news agency TASS reported that the two-seat Su-57D will be used to test combat artificial intelligence under development at the Sukhoi Design Bureau. The source was Mikhail Strelets, the bureau’s director, speaking on the Zvezda television programme Military Acceptance.

That sentence deserves to be read carefully, because it contains a claim, a claimant, and a broadcaster, and all three belong to the same state.

What is genuinely verifiable is narrower, and still interesting: Russia has built a two-seat stealth fighter, flown it, and says its second cockpit exists to command drones.

Everything else attributed to Strelets in the coverage — the combat AI, the swarms, the Okhotnik — was reported by TASS in paraphrase, not in quotation marks. No architecture, no autonomy level, no timeline and no decision authority has been disclosed. Army Recognition, which covered the story at length, was blunt that this should be viewed as a development objective rather than a demonstrated capability.

Russia's Su-57 Is Supposed To Challenge Western 5th-Gen Fighters — So Why Is Its Fleet So Small?

One of the best predictors of a successful fighter jet program is how many units are produced. This is especially true for aircraft that are exported to other countries that select them objectively (as opposed to Soviet-style military aid). There are exceptions, perhaps the most obvious being the US Air Force's F-22 Raptor. The circumstances of that aircraft are different, as it was built for the Cold War, it entered service during GWOT when the need for the fighter had largely disappeared. Congress also banned its export.

None of this is true for the Russian Sukhoi Su-57. The fighter was initially developed as a joint Russo-Indian program and was explicitly designed for export. It also entered service at a time of worsening geopolitical security, as Cold War legacy fighter jets are being retired and replaced around the world. It is only a mild exaggeration (explained below) to say no one has wanted to buy it, not even Russia. While the failure to export the Su-57 could be interpreted as a greater vote of no confidence in Russia than the aircraft itself, it's an insufficient explanation in light of Russia's own modest order.

Why This Small European Country Has Twice As Many 5th-Gen Fighters As Russia

The world's fifth-generation fighter jets are generally considered to be the F-22 Raptor, the F-35 Lightning II, the Shenyang J-35, the Chengdu J-20, and the Sukhoi Su-57. There is debate about whether the Su-57 should be considered a true fifth-generation fighter jet or a 4.5th-generation fighter with some low-observable characteristics. But for the purposes of this article, it will be included as a fifth-generation fighter.

The fighter jet entered Russian service in 2020 while Norway received its first F-35As in 2017. Today, Norway may have around double the number of fifth-generation fighters in service compared with Russia. In fact, Russia may or may not even be in the top ten countries by number of fifth-generation fighter jets in service as of mid-2026, as it's unclear if it has more or less than Denmark.

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