The Su-37 was a single-seat, twin-engine, multi-role military technology demonstrator aircraft developed by Sukhoi of Russia. Only one was built and it took its maiden flight on April 2, 1996. The Su-37 provided Sukhoi engineers with troves of technical data that they used in the development and enhancement of a variety of their other airframes. The sole Su-37 crashed in late 2002.
Development of the Su-37 began in the early 1980s when the Soviet military expressed interest in developing a next-generation aircraft. They sought an extremely maneuverable jet fighter that could accomplish a wide variety of missions, both air-to-air and air-to-surface. Engineers at Sukhoi based their new initiative on their successful Su-27, a multi-role jet that first took to the sky in May of 1977 and was introduced in June of 1985.
Sukhoi added thrust vectoring, an advanced radar that could track targets both in the air and on the ground or water, and used novel materials including state-of-the-art alloys and carbon fiber composites, among many other innovations. While not a fifth-generation fighter, the Su-37 was in a league of its own among fourth-gen aircraft, notably with its nimbleness in the air. It could perform a number of maneuvers that were seemingly impossible for a jet aircraft, namely the “Kulbit,” an extremely tight loop.
The Su-37 measured 72 feet in length, stood 19 feet, 6 inches tall, and had a wingspan of 48 feet, 3 inches. It featured a steeply swept main wing, swept canard foreplanes, and a traditional empennage with twin vertical stabilizers and flying horizontal tailplanes. It was powered by two Saturn AL-37FU afterburning turbofan engines with thrust-vectoring nozzles. Each engine could produce up to 32,000 pounds of thrust with afterburner.
The Su-37 had a range of 2,100 miles, a service ceiling of 62,000 feet above sea level, and a climb rate of 45,000 feet per minute. It had a top speed of 1,600 miles per hour and could handle maneuvers up to +9 gs.
