Su-57 vs F-35: How Russia’s Stealth Fighter Compares With America’s

The F-35 is significantly stealthier, by the consistent assessment of Western analysts, although neither government publishes a radar cross-section figure. The F-35 was designed for low observability from all angles, with edges aligned, weapons carried internally, engine faces hidden deep inside curved inlets and a radar-absorbent coating over the whole airframe.

The Su-57 was built with more emphasis on speed and agility. Its shaping reduces its frontal radar return, but analysts point to features that make it easier to detect than the F-35, including the exposed infrared sensor ball ahead of the cockpit, visible panel joints and engine faces that are only partly masked by radar blockers. Russia’s answer is that the Su-57 is meant to fight stealthy opponents rather than simply hide from them: according to details shown by Rosoboronexport at the LIMA exhibition in May 2025, the jet pairs its X-band nose radar with side-looking arrays and L-band radars in the wings intended to detect stealth targets.

The Su-57 is faster and carries more weapons, while the F-35 relies on stealth and sensors rather than raw performance. The Su-57 reaches around Mach 2, with Russian figures putting its range at about 1,250 kilometres on a combat mission and 4,000 kilometres when ferrying. The F-35A reaches Mach 1.6, with Lockheed Martin giving a combat radius of more than 590 nautical miles, about 1,090 kilometres, on internal fuel. The two figures are not measured the same way, since a combat radius is the distance a jet can fly out and still return, so they cannot be compared directly.

The Su-57 is powered by two AL-41F1 engines, each producing more than 142 kN with afterburner, and steers its thrust through vectoring nozzles that make it one of the most agile fighters flying. A new AL-51F engine is planned for the later Su-57M. The F-35A has a single Pratt & Whitney F135, among the most powerful fighter engines in service at about 43,000 pounds of thrust.

On weapons, the Su-57 carries up to four missiles in its main bays and two more in small side bays, plus six external pylons when stealth is not needed. The F-35A usually carries four weapons internally, such as two AIM-120 air-to-air missiles and two 2,000-pound bombs, and can add more under its wings at the cost of its stealth.

There are roughly 30 times more F-35s than Su-57s. Lockheed Martin reported on January 7 that it delivered a record 191 F-35s in 2025 and that the global fleet stood at almost 1,300 aircraft operated by 12 nations. The Pentagon and Lockheed agreed a framework in October for 850 more U.S. jets over ten years, and the U.S. Air Force expects the F-35 to make up about 40 percent of the 1,509 fighters it says it needs by 2035.

The Su-57 count is far less certain, since Russia no longer publishes delivery totals. Rostec said in September that more than 44 Su-57s had been built, a figure that includes prototypes and test aircraft, according to Defence Security Asia. Estimates of production jets delivered to the Russian Aerospace Forces between 2020 and 2025 range from about 20 in some Western assessments to the 48 claimed by Russian sources. The Russian Ministry of Defence ordered 76 serial aircraft at the Army-2019 forum, due by 2027 or 2028 depending on the account.

An F-35A now costs about $92 million on average, while Russia has never published a unit price for the Su-57. Figures from the F-35 Joint Program Office, published by Air & Space Forces Magazine on September 3, put the average flyaway cost of an F-35A in production Lots 18 and 19 at $92.0 million, including its engine and radar, up from $82.5 million in the previous lots. The short-takeoff F-35B costs $121.4 million and the carrier-based F-35C $110.8 million.

No reliable price exists for the Su-57E offered to export customers, and any figure quoted without a contract behind it is an estimate.

Both have flown combat missions, but the F-35 has done so far more widely and over defended airspace. Lockheed Martin says F-35s played a key role in suppressing Iran’s air defences during the U.S. Operation Midnight Hammer strikes in June 2025, and NATO F-35s shot down Russian drones over Poland that September, the first time the alliance’s F-35s engaged threats in allied airspace. Israel has flown the type in combat since 2018.

The Su-57 has been used against Ukraine, but cautiously. A UK Defence Intelligence assessment on January 9, 2023 judged that Russia had almost certainly flown Su-57 missions since at least June 2022, probably from inside Russian airspace while firing long-range missiles into Ukraine, to avoid losing a jet over enemy territory. In June 2024, Ukraine’s military intelligence released satellite images it said showed a Su-57 hit by a drone strike at Akhtubinsk airfield in southern Russia. No Su-57 is publicly known to have fought another aircraft.

The closest American equivalent in role is the F-22 Raptor rather than the F-35. Like the Su-57, the F-22 is a large twin-engine fighter built first to win control of the air, with high speed, thrust vectoring and long range, while the single-engine F-35 is a multirole jet designed above all for stealthy strike and sensor work. The F-22 is not exported and its production ended in 2011, which leaves the F-35 as the Su-57’s real rival on the export market.

That rivalry is now concrete. The F-35 has been chosen by U.S. allies across Europe, Asia and the Middle East and is competing against European fighters in countries such as Portugal. Algeria is widely reported to be the first Su-57E customer, with Russian newspaper Izvestia reporting in November 2025 that it had received two aircraft, but neither Moscow nor Algiers has officially named the buyer.