Su-27 vs Su-35: What Changed When Sukhoi Rebuilt the Flanker

How the Su-35 grew out of the Su-27

The Sukhoi Su-27 was the Soviet answer to the American F-15, a big twin-engine fighter built for long-range air defense. Its T-10 prototype first flew on May 20, 1977, and the Soviet Air Force began receiving production jets in June 1985.

The Sukhoi Su-35 is not a new design. Sukhoi began it in December 2003 as a “deep” modernization of the Su-27, meant as an interim fighter while the PAK FA program, today’s Su-57 Felon, was developed.

Test pilot Sergey Bogdan flew the first prototype for 55 minutes from Zhukovsky on February 19, 2008. Russia ordered 48 production jets, designated Su-35S, at the MAKS air show in 2009, and the type entered service with the 23rd Fighter Aviation Regiment in February 2014.

Both jets sit in the wider family covered in our guide to Sukhoi fighter jets. The gap between them is roughly a generation, the distinction our explainer on the five generations of fighter planes sets out.

One of those early canard jets was later fitted with thrust-vectoring nozzles and became the Su-37 demonstrator, first flown on April 2, 1996. Its vectoring work fed into the Su-35 that Russia flies today.

Su-27 vs Su-35: how to tell them apart

From a distance the two look almost identical, and they share the same 71 ft 10 in (21.90 m) length. The quickest tell is on top of the fuselage.

The Su-27 carries a single large dorsal airbrake behind the cockpit. The Su-35 has none, so its spine runs clean from the canopy to the tail.

Look at the tail next. The pointed “stinger” between the Su-35’s engines is shaped differently, without the rectangular boxes along its sides that later Su-27s carry.

Then check the nozzles. The Su-35’s thrust-vectoring nozzles can visibly deflect, while the Su-27’s are fixed. Neither jet has canards, which is how you separate both from the Su-30MKI, the naval Su-33 and the old Su-27M.

Where the Su-35 wins

A radar that sees farther and shoots at more

The Su-27’s N001 Myech radar can track 10 targets but guide missiles at only one of them at a time, two missiles at once. The Su-35’s N035 Irbis-E tracks 30 targets and can attack 8 simultaneously.

The Irbis-E is a passive electronically scanned array on a hydraulic mount, which swings it to cover a wider arc. It is credited with detecting a target with a 3-square-meter radar cross-section at up to 249 miles (400 km) in a narrow search, and 124 miles (200 km) otherwise.

Both jets carry an infrared search and track sensor ahead of the cockpit, which finds aircraft by their heat without transmitting. The Su-35’s OLS-35 doubles as a targeting system. For self-protection the Su-35 carries the L175M Khibiny-M jammer and an OAR missile approach warning system.

Thrust vectoring and more thrust

The Su-35 runs on two Saturn AL-41F1S turbofans, a highly upgraded development of the Su-27’s AL-31F. Each makes 30,865 lbf (137 kN) with afterburner, against 27,560 lbf (123 kN) for the Su-27’s engines.

Their nozzles are canted at an angle. They move in one plane, but vectoring each one differently lets the jet roll and yaw as well as pitch, and Sukhoi’s brochure calls the result all-axis thrust vector control.

With its integrated flight and engine controls, that lets the Su-35 fly post-stall maneuvers at low speed. The engines also give it a limited ability to hold speeds above Mach 1.1 without afterburner, known as supercruise.

Published thrust-to-weight figures favor the newer jet too. The Su-35 is rated at 1.13 with half its internal fuel, the Su-27 at 1.07 with 56% of its fuel.

Twice the payload and a longer reach

The Su-35 carries 17,600 lb (8,000 kg) of stores on 12 hardpoints, against 9,750 lb (4,450 kg) on the Su-27’s 10. It can fire air-to-air missiles with ranges of up to 186 miles (300 km), and in 2025 it gained the newer R-77M.

The baseline Su-27 was built around the radar-guided R-27 and the heat-seeking R-73. Russia’s Su-27SM upgrade later added the active-radar R-77 and guided air-to-ground weapons, which the basic variants could not use.

For strike work the Su-35 carries Kh-31 anti-radiation and anti-ship missiles, the Kh-59MK, laser- and TV-guided KAB-500 bombs and even the heavy P-800 Oniks anti-ship missile. The baseline Su-27’s ground attack menu is unguided bombs and rockets.

A modern cockpit and a smaller radar signature

The baseline Su-27 cockpit uses analog flight instruments. The Su-35’s has two 9 by 12 inch (23 by 30 cm) color displays, a head-up display and hands-on-throttle-and-stick controls, a layout Sukhoi redesigned after Russian Air Force pilots criticized the workload in the earlier Su-27M.

Sukhoi also applied radar-absorbent material to the Su-35’s engine inlets and front compressor stages to halve its frontal radar cross-section, reportedly to 1 to 3 square meters. It is still not a stealth jet, and its weapons hang outside the airframe. The jets that are stealthy are compared in our guide to stealth fighter jets.

Where the Su-27 still wins

On a spec sheet the older jet takes several lines. Its published top speed is Mach 2.35, or 1,554 mph (2,500 km/h), against Mach 2.25 and 1,491 mph (2,400 km/h) for the Su-35.

It also lists a higher ceiling, 60,700 ft against 59,055 ft, and a faster climb, 59,000 ft/min against 55,000 ft/min. Its empty weight is 36,112 lb (16,380 kg), about 5,800 lb lighter than the Su-35’s 41,888 lb (19,000 kg).

Both sit in our ranking of the fastest fighter jets. The Su-27’s real strength was never raw speed but agility: it had the Soviet Union’s first operational fly-by-wire flight control system.

Combined with low wing loading, that fly-by-wire system keeps the Su-27 controllable at very low speeds and high angles of attack. Test pilot Viktor Pugachev first showed off the Cobra in a Su-27 in 1989, briefly holding level flight at a 120 degree angle of attack.

The Su-27 also has numbers and reach. It serves in far more air forces, and China license-built it as the Shenyang J-11, then developed the J-11B with its own systems.

Su-27 vs Su-35 size

They are the same length, 71 ft 10 in (21.90 m). The Su-35 is wider, with a 50 ft 2 in (15.30 m) wingspan against 48 ft 3 in (14.70 m).

It is also heavier. Its maximum takeoff weight is 76,000 lb (34,500 kg), against 67,000 lb (30,500 kg) for the Su-27, and it holds 3,800 gallons of fuel to the Su-27’s 3,150.

That extra fuel buys only a little more published range: 2,240 miles (3,600 km) for the Su-35 against 2,190 miles (3,530 km) for the Su-27. The Su-27 figure assumes four missiles carried and fired halfway, so the two may not be like for like.

Both are among the biggest fighter jets in service. The full side-by-side dimensions sit in the database comparison at the top of this page.

Su-35 vs Su-27 in combat

The two have fought each other. Since February 2022 the Su-27 has flown for both Russia and Ukraine, and Russia’s Su-35s fly air superiority missions against Ukrainian fighters.

In August 2026, Military Watch Magazine reported a claim by Sergey Kobylash, commander of the Russian Air Force, that one Su-35S destroyed two Ukrainian Su-27s in a single engagement, using three air-to-air missiles. He did not say when; the magazine suggests the early months of 2022, and the claim has not been independently confirmed.

By September 2022, Russian fighters including the Su-35S had at least seven confirmed air-to-air victories over Ukrainian fighters. Ukraine had lost 19 Su-27s by April 21, 2026, according to Wikipedia’s operator tally.

Ukraine inherited about 66 to 70 Su-27s in 1991 and had roughly 34 in service by 2019. Its jets have since been adapted to carry American AGM-88 HARM anti-radiation missiles and JDAM-ER guided bombs, weapons no Russian Flanker uses.

The Su-35 has taken losses too. The open-source tracker Oryx counted eight Su-35S and three Russian Su-27 losses as of February 25, 2026, as reported by Aerospace Global News.

On July 8, 2026, Ukraine’s Air Force said it shot down a Su-35 near Mostky, in Luhansk, with multiple reports pointing to a Patriot missile. On September 7, 2026, two Su-35S fighters reportedly collided over Russia’s Kursk region, killing one pilot.

The Su-27’s combat record goes back further. Ethiopian Su-27s shot down two Eritrean MiG-29s in February 1999, and on March 14, 2023, a Russian Su-27 dumped fuel on a US MQ-9 Reaper over the Black Sea and struck it, sending the drone into the sea.

Who flies the Su-27 and the Su-35?

The Su-27 is flown by Russia, Ukraine, China, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Vietnam, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Angola and Indonesia. Russia had about 101 baseline Su-27s in service in 2021, alongside upgraded Su-27SM jets and two-seat trainers.

Even the US Air Force has a few. Two Su-27Ps arrived from Belarus in 1995. In 2011 the Air Force bought two Su-27UB two-seaters that Pride Aircraft had imported from Ukraine in 2009 and demilitarized for private buyers.

One of those two-seaters retired in 2023 and now sits in the Cold War Gallery of the National Museum of the United States Air Force in Dayton, Ohio. Private ownership of jets like these is covered in our guide to fighter jets civilians can own.

The Su-35 has a much shorter list. Defence Security Asia estimated Russia’s operational fleet at about 155 at the end of 2025, after an estimated 15 to 18 new jets that year, and the first publicly announced batch of 2026 was handed over on April 19.

China bought 24 in a 2015 deal. Algeria took delivery in 2025 of Su-35s originally built for Egypt, which dropped its order under US sanctions pressure.

Iran appears to be next. In September 2026, Militarnyi reported footage of at least three Su-35s arriving in Iran, one landing at Tehran’s Mehrabad airport, though neither government had confirmed the delivery. Our overview of the Iranian Air Force shows what they would join.

Su-27 vs Su-30 vs Su-35

The Su-30 is the third branch of the same tree: a two-seat, dual-role derivative of the Su-27 built for air-to-air and ground attack work. Its Su-30MKI version pairs thrust vectoring with canards, a layout the Su-35 dropped.

The lines are converging. Russia’s Su-30SM2 upgrade gives the two-seater the Su-35’s AL-41F1S engines. Our page on the Sukhoi Su-30MK covers that branch in detail.

For how the Su-35 fares against Western rivals, see our F-22 vs Su-35 comparison and our Eurofighter Typhoon vs Su-35 page. The original Flanker meets America’s lightweight fighter in our Su-27 vs F-16 comparison.

The verdict

Take the Su-35. It sees farther, tracks and engages more targets, carries almost twice the load, fires missiles the baseline Su-27 cannot, and turns in ways the original Flanker never could.

The Su-27 keeps its place in history as the airframe that made all of this possible, and it still flies over Ukraine for both sides. For the wider field, see our guide to the best Russian fighter jets and our ranking of the best fighter jets in the world.