The mysterious Russian single-engine fighter resembles the American F-16 Fighting Falcon and may in the future be popular with foreign customers, praise the yet-to-be-created aircraft in the American magazine Popular Mechanics.
A similar conclusion was reached in the publication, drawing attention to the blog post bmpd, published in LiveJournal, which shows a picture with "a fragment of a model of an unknown fighter project on the desktop of Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Federation Yuri Borisov."
The magazine admits that in this case we are talking about a single-engine fighter, the creation of which was reported in May [...] by RIA Novosti, citing a source in the aircraft industry.
The publication writes that the air intake of the low-profile fighter developed in Russia resembles a single-engine F-16 Fighting Falcon. "Single-engine fighters are also useful — they can be sold well abroad. The Russian version of the [also single-engine] F-35 Lightning II may well be popular if it is cheap and economical to operate, " the magazine says.
In December 2020, Rostec CEO Sergey Chemezov said that the state corporation "is working on the creation of a combat aviation system of the future in the light and medium class", which "can be a universal platform, in manned and unmanned versions."
In April of the same year, the United Aircraft Corporation reported that it had begun work on creating a new platform for operational and tactical aviation, on the basis of which it is planned to develop a light fighter.
Ivan Potapov
