Roof Collapses at Russian Su-35 and Su-57 Production Workshop After Fire

In Komsomolsk-on-Amur, Russia, the roof collapsed in one of the workshops at the Gagarin Aviation Plant (KnAAP), which manufactures the Su-35 and Su-57 fighter jets.

Satellite images of the aftermath were published by the OSINT resource Exilenova+.

The collapse occurred as a result of a fire that broke out on the night of April 11-12, as Militarnyi previously reported.

The published images show damage to one of the plant’s production buildings — several sections of the roof have collapsed.

The collapse occurred in the area of production workshops responsible for manufacturing key aircraft components.

Plant No. 46

This refers to Plant No. 46, which is a crucial link in the production process and specializes in manufacturing parts from polymer composite materials (PCM) for the Su-57. In particular, the plant produces the following:

• approximately 300 different parts, of which about 100 are large-scale,
• including aileron panels, air intakes,
• flaperons, floor panels, and wing tip fairings.

Plant No. 46 is also the important part for the serial production of the Su-35S, however, its damage has a significantly greater impact on the production of the former, since the number of composite parts in the Su-57’s structure is many times greater than in the Su-30MK2 and Su-35S.

Russian sources have reported that the labor intensity of manufacturing a complete set of composite parts for the Su-57 in this shop has increased eightfold compared to the Su-35S.

According to analysts’ estimates, damage to or destruction of the workshop would directly halt or significantly slow down the assembly of Su-57 airframes, and cooperation with ONPP “Tekhnologiya” would only be able to partially compensate for this, and with a significant time lag.