Russian Su-57 Jet Flies Itself, Pilot Focuses on Combat

Russia’s Sukhoi Company has incorporated automation technologies into Su-57 jet’s cockpit, allowing it to “fly itself,” while the pilot focuses on combat.

“The Su-57 has achieved maximum automation. Theoretically, the pilot, after taking off and before landing, may not fly at all, but search and attack targets. Moreover, this process is also sufficiently automated,” Nikita Dorofeev, head of Sukhoi Design Bureau's cockpit department, said in an interview with United Aircraft Corporation (UAC) Horizons corporate magazine.

Information pertaining to aircraft behaviour, enemy warplanes, etc is large and complex, but the area to display this is less in the cockpit. It is also not possible to display all the data at once.

In the new update however, the data will be displayed depending on the phase of the mission and tasks required to be done. So there's no information overload to the pilot, Rostec said in a statement today.

Intellectual support technology provides the Su-57 pilot with assistance in solving problems, taking into account the current situation and the forecast of its development. “Our task is to make the pilot situationally aware, so that he knows what the plane is doing. We need a balance: on the one hand, a high level of automation, which allows the 'man-machine' system to successfully solve the assigned tasks, and on the other, the pilot must control the process, understand what mode is being performed, how the systems work and what will happen next,” Nikita Dorofeev added.