Fire catches Russia’s only Su-57 production plant in Komsomolsk-on-Amur

A fire erupted inside the grounds of the Komsomolsk-on-Amur Aviation Plant (KnAAZ) named after Yuri Gagarin, Russia’s sole serial manufacturer of the Su-57 Felon fifth-generation fighter jet, according to footage and reports circulating on social media.

The open-source intelligence community Cyberboroshno, which analyzes Russian military-industrial activity, reported that video and posts captured on social media confirm a fire inside Shop No. 46 of the facility, located in Komsomolsk-on-Amur in Russia’s Far East Khabarovsk Krai region. KnAAZ is a branch of PJSC Sukhoi Company and a key division of the United Aircraft Corporation (UAC) under the Rostec state defense conglomerate. Neither KnAAZ, Sukhoi, UAC, nor Russian emergency services had made any official statement about the incident at the time of publication.

Shop No. 46 is not a peripheral structure. According to Cyberboroshno’s assessment, the workshop is the dedicated production facility for polymer composite material (PCM) components used in the Su-57 airframe — approximately 300 distinct part designations manufactured there, of which roughly 100 are large-format structural elements. Those components include aileron panels, flaperon panels, floor sections, and outer wing tip fairings. Losing access to even a portion of that output would cascade directly into Su-57 airframe assembly, since these parts cannot simply be sourced from an alternative domestic supplier on short notice.

The manufacturing process inside Shop No. 46 is predominantly manual, supplemented only partially by modern automated equipment. That production model makes the workshop acutely dependent on two things that cannot be quickly reconstituted: a trained workforce and intact physical infrastructure. Composite component fabrication for fifth-generation fighters is a highly specialized discipline; technicians working with advanced polymer laminates, autoclave curing systems, and precision layup processes require years of training and certification. A disruption to the workshop’s physical layout — machinery, tooling, clean-room environments, or curing equipment — is not something that can be remedied with a procurement order.

The Su-57 — developed under the T-50 experimental aircraft program — is Russia’s answer to fourth-generation stealth fighters such as the American F-22 Raptor and F-35 Lightning II. The aircraft is designed to engage air targets at long range and in close combat, strike ground and naval targets, and penetrate advanced integrated air defense systems. Its airframe relies heavily on polymer composite materials to reduce radar cross-section and minimize structural weight — characteristics that are inseparable from the manufacturing processes housed in facilities like Shop No. 46. Russia has struggled for years to produce the aircraft at the rate its own defense ministry requires. A contract signed in 2019 covers 76 airframes to be delivered by 2027–2028, with the Russian Aerospace Forces (VKS) standing as the sole operator. Unofficial estimates as of late 2025 placed the total number of Su-57s in service at between 20 and 25 aircraft — a fraction of what Moscow originally envisioned for a program that entered flight testing in 2010.

KnAAZ is the only facility in Russia certified to assemble the Su-57 in serial quantities, and it simultaneously produces the Su-35S fourth-generation multirole fighter. The plant operates under extensive Western sanctions — the United States sanctioned KnAAZ in March 2022, and the European Union followed with its own designations — making foreign equipment replacement effectively impossible through legal channels. That sanctions pressure has already forced the plant to pursue domestic substitutes for a range of manufacturing processes, a challenge the facility’s management has acknowledged publicly on multiple occasions.

The incident at Shop No. 46, if confirmed to have caused meaningful structural or equipment damage, would represent a serious setback for the one program Russia is counting on to demonstrate fifth-generation air power parity with Western air forces. Moscow has publicly committed to accelerating Su-57 output and had the plant loaded with production orders through 2030. Any disruption to the composite workshop — the starting point for large portions of the aircraft’s outer mold line — would work its way through every downstream assembly stage, from structural integration to final systems checkout and delivery. The extent of the damage remains unconfirmed pending independent verification.