Rosoboronexport says the Su-57 has proven itself in combat, that new export contracts for the Su-57E have been signed, and that deliveries begin this year.

It will not say who signed them. Or for how many aircraft. Or for how much.

The claim was made by Alexander Mikheev, the arms exporter’s chief executive, in the run-up to the El Alamein airshow in Egypt, where Russia is flying the Su-57E and unveiling two new weapons for it. It is a sales pitch delivered on a sales floor, and it deserves to be read as one.

One customer that is real

Mikheev’s unnamed contracts are unverifiable, but the Su-57 does have at least one genuine foreign operator. Algeria is reported to have received a first batch, with video near Oum El Bouaghi air base in February 2026 cited as confirmation. Algiers has also taken ex-Egyptian Su-35s, built for Cairo before American sanctions pressure collapsed that deal, apparently as a stopgap.

So the export programme is not fictional. What is unclear is whether anything new has been signed, or whether Mikheev is describing the Algerian deal in the present tense for an audience of prospective buyers.

The combat record is the awkward part

“Proven in combat” is doing a great deal of work in that sentence.

Russia has largely kept the Su-57 out of contested airspace over Ukraine, flying it from standoff distance as a cruise-missile launcher rather than pushing it forward. That caution has reasons.

In June 2024, Ukraine’s military intelligence said it had struck a Su-57 on the ground at Akhtubinsk in Astrakhan region, roughly 590 kilometres from the front line, using one-way attack drones. It released before-and-after satellite imagery showing the aircraft intact one day and scorched the next. The Russian military blogger Fighterbomber confirmed the strike had happened. The Royal United Services Institute assessed at the time that even the temporary loss of a single airframe amounted to around five percent of the operational fleet, because so few exist.

Four months later, video circulating on Russian and Ukrainian channels appeared to show a Su-57 shooting down Russia’s own S-70 Okhotnik stealth drone near Kostiantynivka in Donetsk region. Russian channels attributed it to a malfunction: the drone reportedly lost contact with its ground operator and drifted toward Ukrainian-held territory, and the accompanying Su-57 destroyed it to stop the wreckage falling into Ukrainian hands. It fell anyway, and Ukrainian forces recovered it. Russia’s Defence Ministry never formally addressed the episode.

What the leaked paperwork suggests

There is a second problem underneath the combat record, and it goes to what a buyer actually receives.

Analysis of leaked classified documents, reported by National Security Journal, indicates Su-57s have been delivered to the Russian air force in incomplete form, with Western sanctions disrupting the supply of microchips and forcing acceptance of aircraft missing elements of the electro-optical targeting system. Independent analysts have separately questioned how stealthy the aircraft really is, pointing to exposed engine nozzles and rear-aspect shaping that look closer to a fourth-generation signature than a fifth. Production is small, on the order of a couple of dozen airframes.

None of that is settled fact, and all of it comes from sources with an interest in the answer. But it is the context in which an unnamed buyer is being asked to sign.

El Alamein 2026, where the Su-57E is flying a display this week alongside American and Chinese aircraft.

Why Egypt, and why now

Egypt is the obvious room in which to make this pitch. It has bought from Moscow for decades, it is not bound by exclusivity to Washington, and it has already been burned once: the Su-35s it ordered ended up in Algeria after American sanctions pressure.

Russia is also competing directly this week. Boeing handed Egypt its first five CH-47F Chinooks on the same show floor, the US flew in F-15Es, F-16s and A-10s, and China brought fighters, tankers and radar aircraft. Announcing signed contracts you decline to describe is a reasonable way to look busy in that company.

The Su-57E will fly its display, the S-71M and S-71K will be shown, and the question of who is buying will remain exactly where Rosoboronexport left it.

Sources: The Defence Blog; TASS via The Defence Blog; Ahram Online; Royal United Services Institute; National Security Journal; 19FortyFive; Army Recognition.