When Russia rolled a sleek single-engine stealth fighter onto the tarmac at the 2021 MAKS air show — complete with an aggressive marketing blitz and a signature perfume — the Su-75 Checkmate looked like Moscow’s answer to the F-35. Five years later, it has flown exactly zero times. What it has, at last, is a prototype taking shape on a factory floor.

The United Aircraft Corporation confirmed in June 2026 that assembly of a flying prototype is under way at the KnAAZ plant in Komsomolsk-on-Amur. That is real progress for a programme many had written off. But the more interesting question is no longer whether Checkmate exists — it is where a cheap, single-engine stealth fighter could possibly fit in a world where America and China already fly theirs by the hundred.

To judge Checkmate fairly, you have to place it beside the company it claims to keep: Russia’s own Su-57, the American F-35, and China’s emerging stealth pair.

From Mock-Up to Metal

The confirmation came from the top. Vadim Badekha, director general of UAC, told the Russian agency TASS that the programme had moved past the drawing board.

Sukhoi’s chief test pilot, Sergei Bogdan, was more expansive on Russian television, insisting the jet was close to leaving the shop floor.

The Single-Engine Bet

Checkmate’s design is the most interesting thing about it. Where every other Russian fast jet of the modern era has run on two engines, the Su-75 gambles on one — the route to lower purchase and running costs, and the same logic Lockheed used for the F-35. Air is fed to that single engine through an unusual diverterless intake tucked under the nose, and the tail dispenses with separate fins in favour of a V-tail whose ruddervators handle both pitch and yaw, a layout not seen since Northrop’s stillborn YF-23.

On paper, the numbers are ambitious. Its designers advertise a top speed of Mach 1.8, a combat radius beyond 1,500 km, and a payload approaching 7,400 kg carried in an internal bay sized for five missiles plus an autocannon, powered by a turbofan from the same Saturn AL-51 family as the upgraded Su-57M. Those are manufacturer claims for an aircraft that has never flown, and should be read as aspirations rather than measured facts.

Checkmate vs. the Su-57

The cleanest way to understand Checkmate is as the light half of a high-low pairing with the Su-57 — the same relationship the F-22 has with the F-35. The Su-57 is the heavy, twin-engine air-superiority fighter; the Su-75 is meant to be the affordable, single-engine workhorse bought in bulk and sold abroad.

There is a problem with that theory: Russia has struggled to field even the expensive half. The Su-57 has been in service since around 2020 but exists only in small numbers, its production repeatedly constrained. A country that cannot mass-produce its flagship stealth fighter faces obvious questions about its ability to build a second one cheaply and in quantity.

Against the American Benchmark

The aircraft Checkmate was explicitly built to undercut is the F-35, and the contrast is stark. Lockheed’s single-engine stealth fighter has been delivered well past the 1,000-airframe mark, flies with more than a dozen air forces, and — whatever its cost controversies — brings mature sensor fusion and a vast support ecosystem. Checkmate offers a lower advertised price, once floated in the region of $25–30 million, but a price tag means little without a production line, a proven sensor suite and customers willing to wait.

Above the F-35 sits the twin-engine F-22, a dedicated air-dominance machine now out of production. Between them, the United States fields the high-low mix Russia is still trying to assemble — and it fields it in numbers Checkmate can only aspire to.

And Against China’s Two

The most uncomfortable comparison for Moscow is Beijing. China already operates the heavy, twin-engine J-20 in growing numbers and is bringing the twin-engine J-35 into service in both land-based and carrier forms. In other words, China has done exactly what Russia intended to do — field a high-low pair of stealth fighters — and has done it while Checkmate remained a mock-up.

That shifts the export calculus, too. A budget-minded air force shopping for a fifth-generation jet outside the American orbit now has a Chinese option that actually flies and is entering series production. Checkmate would arrive late to a market someone else is already serving.

Why the Scepticism Is Earned

The doubts are not merely about engineering. International sanctions have complicated Russia’s access to advanced components, the war in Ukraine consumes the aircraft and money the aerospace sector would otherwise spend, and the Su-57 line already competes for the same resources. Early interest from prospective backers such as the UAE cooled; analyst Maya Carlin of the Center for Security Policy has noted that Middle Eastern investors pulled back and refocused on acquiring the F-35 instead. No firm export order has been publicly confirmed, and as of mid-2026 not a single operational Checkmate exists.

The maiden flight, meanwhile, has been promised for 2023, 2024, 2025 and now late 2026. Each slip makes the next pledge easier to doubt.

Where Checkmate Fits

For now, the honest verdict is narrow but real: the Su-75 has moved from marketing to manufacturing, which is more than it had a year ago. Whether it becomes the affordable stealth fighter Russia advertised, or joins the long list of elegant Russian concepts that never reached squadron service, depends on a first flight that has to actually happen — and on a production system under more strain than at any point since the programme began.

The design is genuinely clever. The context is genuinely brutal. Checkmate’s problem was never the shape of the aircraft; it was everything surrounding it — and while Russia argued with its own timelines, the rest of the world kept flying.

Rostec’s original 2021 Checkmate reveal — the campaign that sold the concept years before a prototype existed.

Sources: TASS; United Aircraft Corporation; The War Zone; Breaking Defense; The National Interest; 19FortyFive; Wikipedia.