Su-27 Flanker

The big, long-legged Soviet air-superiority fighter built to match the F-15 Eagle over the vast distances of the USSR — and the airframe from which an entire dynasty descends: the Su-30, Su-33, Su-34, Su-35 and the Su-57. Ukraine's most capable fighter before the war, the Su-27 flew the desperate night intercepts of the invasion's opening hours, took heavy losses against more modern Russian jets and ground defenses, and — like the MiG-29 — was later adapted to fling Western precision bombs and anti-radar missiles.

Overview

The Su-27 (NATO: Flanker) is a twin-engine, supermaneuverable, fourth-generation heavy fighter designed by Sukhoi as the Soviet Union's answer to the US "teen series" — a direct competitor to the F-15 and F-14, with long range, a heavy weapons load and the agility for which the Flanker became famous (the "Pugachev's Cobra" maneuver was its calling card). It was the high end of the Soviet high-low pairing with the lightweight MiG-29. After 1991, Ukraine inherited a Flanker fleet and entered the 2022 war with around 32 operational across two brigades. As the Ukrainian Air Force's heaviest, longest-ranged fighter, it carried much of the early air-defense burden — and has since become, with the MiG-29, a testbed for grafting NATO weapons onto Soviet jets.

Development

The Su-27 first flew on 20 May 1977 (the redesigned T-10S that became the production aircraft), entered service in 1985, and was built from the early 1980s, per Britannica and Wikipedia. Conceived under the Soviet PFI program alongside the MiG-29, it was engineered for air-superiority missions across continental distances — a 3,530 km ferry range, heavy ordnance and sophisticated (for the era) avionics. Its blended fuselage-wing "centroplan" gave it lift and fuel volume that founded an extraordinarily prolific family: the multirole Su-30, carrier-borne Su-33, strike Su-34, 4++-generation Su-35 and ultimately the Su-57. At the USSR's collapse, Russia kept the Sukhoi design bureau and test infrastructure, while Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan retained operational Flanker regiments.

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