The NPO Saturn engines took to the sky the second development prototype of the fifth generation fighter

Site news 5.03.2011

On March, 3rd 2011 the second development prototype of the Russian fifth generation fighter powered by the NPO Saturn engines made its maiden flight. The aircraft took off from the runway at the Komsomolsk-on-Amur aviation production association. The flight was successful. No remarks on the performance of the engines were made. The fighter was piloted by the honored test pilot of the Russian Federation Sergey Bogdan, the same pilot who took to the sky the first T-50 prototype early in 2010.
The chief executive officer of NPO Saturn – deputy general director of MC ODK Ilya Fedorov: “We can say that the flight of the second aircraft went well; there were no remarks regarding either the engine or the control system. We made sure the aircraft flies right from the moment it is ready to take off. Of course, such readiness made the test pilot really excited. I’d like to wish this aircraft to continue its successful test campaign and commence serial production”.
 
 According to the general designer of A.M. Lyulka research and development center – director of A.M. Lyulka research and development center (subsidiary of NPO Saturn) Evgeny Marchukov, “the engines powering the prototypes of the Russian prospective fifth generation fighter are considerably different from the 117S engines installed on the Su-35 aircraft by both performance and principally new automatic control system. The T-50 aircraft equipped with the NPO Saturn engines fully complies with the aircraft performance characteristics and will subsequently be provided with the same engines for the needs of the Russian Air Force. The new fighter development program is off to a good start. There are only two countries in the world, U.S.A. and Russia, capable of producing such aircraft. It is a significant achievement indeed”.
 
 As a reminder, the successfully passed ground and flight test campaign allowed the T-50-1 prototype to make its first flight on 29 January 2010.
 At this moment specific ground tests including endurance tests are ongoing at the Lytkarino machine-building plant’s test facilities (subsidiary of NPO Saturn), ground operability checks together with the aircraft systems are being run on the T-50-KNS prototype at Sukhoi’s test base on the premises of Gromov flight test institute, flight tests continue on Т-50-1 (over 40 flights), Т-50-2 (2 flights) and on a Su-27 flight test bed (32 flights).