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Leaders not impressed by new Russian fighter

The flying debut of Russia’s answer to the F-22 Raptor isn’t wowing Air Force leaders.

Dubbed the T-50 or PAK-FA, the fifth-generation stealth fighter jet made its maiden flight Jan. 29 — 47 minutes over eastern Russia — and has flown at least twice since then. The twin-engine jet will replace the MiG-29 Fulcrum and Su-27 Flanker, both fourth-generation front-line fighters.

The first operational T-50s should be delivered in 2015, the same year the Air Force expects its first F-35 Lightning II. Also a fifth-generation fighter, the F-35 has a single supersonic engine and stealth capabilities.

“I didn’t see anything … that would cause me to rethink plans for the F-22 or F-35,” Air Force Secretary Michael Donley told reporters Feb. 18 at the Air Force Association’s winter conference, held in Orlando, Fla.

“Russia has a robust [aircraft industry],” Donley added. “This is not a surprise in that context.”

The PAK-FA resembles the F-22 — distinctive tilted rear tail fins and all — and has many of the same high-tech features, including digital avionics, a phased-array radar and communications equipment to link the fighter to command and control centers, according to the Russian news agency Tass.

The Air Force ordered the last of its 187 F-22s in 2009. Russia has not had a new fighter in nearly 20 years; the Indian air force is also sponsoring development of a version of the T-50.

“It looks like a plane we’ve seen before,” Gen. Roger Brady, the air boss for NATO and commander of U.S. Air Forces in Europe, said at the conference.

Gen. Gary North, commander of Pacific Air Forces, made clear his impression of the fighter: “I guess the greatest flattery is how much they copy you.”

Still, the four-stars wonder whether the T-50 will live up to its fifth-generation billing.

“I don’t know if it’s really a fifth-generation aircraft,” Brady said. “What I do know is that it’s very clear that they’re working on a fifth-generation technology.”

For Brady, Russia’s push on the development front signals that the U.S. cannot settle for the status quo.

“The key is, we must continue to do fifth-generation and sixth-generation research and put money against it because other people clearly are,” Brady said.

North added that the Pentagon must ensure fourth-generation jets such as the F-15, F-16 and F/A-18 are continually upgraded.

“If we’re not going to buy more, what we’ve got to have is the very best that our sons and daughters go out to fight with,” he said.

In tandem with the T-50 project, Russia is developing a long-range bomber.

“We won’t limit ourselves to just one new model,” Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said March 1. “We must start work on a prospective long-range aircraft, our new strategic bomber.”

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The Associated Press contributed to this report.