Stealth Wars: The Battle For Air Superiority

A Russian SU-57 swoops above an air-show crowd. The plane was touted as Russia's fifth-generation fighter -- a military term describing a jet’s stealth, electronics, and the ability to serve different roles above the battlefield.

India, which was partnering with Russia to develop the fighter, walked away from the project early this year. On July 2, Russia’s deputy defense minister announced the SU-57 program, which cost an estimated $8 to $10 billion, was being scaled down.

Ten of the planes have been built, but after India quit the project, the goal of having 150 SU-57s in active service by 2020 looks nearly impossible, meaning the world now has just three fifth-generation fighter planes ready to dogfight.

This year, 28 Chengdu J-20 fighters were delivered to China’s Air Force. The J-20 can tuck missiles inside its airframe, is shaped to baffle radar detection, and is coated in paint that absorbs radar waves.

The J-20's stealthiness means it would be able to sneak through many air defense systems, and attack other aircraft without being spotted.

But the plane is crippled by its inability to "super-cruise." The J-20 is reportedly only able to break the speed of sound by squirting fuel into its exhaust nozzles to engage its "afterburners."

Afterburners gobble up fuel, and leave an easily detectable heat signature. (File photo of U.S. engine testing).

Lynette Nusbacher, a strategist and former British intelligence officer, told RFE/RL the J-20's engines leave China on the bench. "When China learns to make a good military aircraft engine, they'll be in the game. Until then, they're bystanders."

In the United States, the quest for stealth began in the 1970s, after a study found most pilots in the Vietnam War were shot down by planes they never saw. 

In 2005, after decades of development, the U.S. Air Force acquired the Lockheed F-22 Raptor (pictured), the world's first fifth-generation fighter.

The plane can super-cruise, and from some angles has a radar footprint reportedly as faint as a small bird's.

One analyst likened dogfighting in the stealthy jet to swimming among sharks that "never see you and never know you're there, and at any time you can reach out and touch them with deadly force."

But the F-22s come with an eye-watering price tag, at around $150 million each. The United States, which bans exporting the fighters, has 187 of the F-22s in operation.

Lynnette Nusbacher told RFE/RL the U.S. strategy of developing costly, hyper-advanced aircraft is risky, and is likely one reason Russia is downsizing its own stealth-fighter program.

"What they're dealing with now is the idea that a guy in Syria with a shoulder-fired rocket is going to blow up an aircraft worth the GDP of a small country," she said.

In 2016, the F-35 Lightning II, a smaller Lockheed Martin jet than the F-22, entered service in the U.S. Air Force. The jet was intended as a cheaper fifth-generation fighter.

A specialized version of the F-35 that can land vertically. The F-35's development was plagued with problems which are still being resolved.

The cost of developing the fighter has ballooned to over $1.5 trillion, making it the most expensive weapons program in history, though the price per plane is forecast to eventually be nearly half that of the F-22 Raptor.

F-35s have been exported to nine foreign buyers, including the Israeli Air Force.

Lynette Nusbacher says the Russian SU-57 project, although apparently doomed, was not necessarily a waste of money.

The military aviation expert says the plane has been used as a development platform that has pushed Russian aerospace technology forward. "We can expect to see a lot of the systems that have been developed in the context of SU-57 to start turning up...on other Russian [planes]."

When asked which country is currently the top dog in the air, Nusbacher has a somewhat surprising answer: "For dogfighting superiority the Israelis, using decades-old American airframe tech, have the upper hand because of their ability to integrate modern [aviation electronics]."