How NATO Can Cripple Russia’s Sukhoi Fighter Fleet Without Firing a Shot

Target the precision tools Russia needs to build and maintain fighters

Su-34 By Vitaly V. Kuzmin - http://vitalykuzmin.net/?q=node/615, CC BY-SA 4.0

Some wars are won with missiles. Others are won with metallurgy, bearings, hardened machine tools, and the quiet ability to stamp aluminum without your country’s lights flickering.

Russia’s war in Ukraine has always been a test of both steel and stamina, but there’s one part of the Kremlin’s military machine that looks far more impressive on parade than in actual combat: its advanced Sukhoi fighter fleet.

These are the jets Russia brands as symbols of national power, the Su-30, Su-34, Su-35, and the elusive Su-57 that appears roughly once a year, like the world’s saddest groundhog.

But beneath the glossy brochures and the airshow smoke trails is a truth Moscow doesn’t want advertised: its fighter production depends on imported precision tools, foreign alloys, and specialized components that Russia cannot quickly replicate.

And according to a new analysis from the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), that dependency is a kill switch… one the West has never fully pushed.

The Myth of Russia’s Self-Sufficient Defense Industry

If you listen to the Kremlin, Russia manufactures everything in-house except sunshine and coffee beans.

The narrative goes: Western sanctions? Russia shrugs them off. Just look at all the missiles, drones, and armored vehicles rolling off assembly lines at 3 a.m. while patriotic workers sing Soviet revival jingles about beating the West with pure Slavic willpower.

This is the cartoon.

Reality looks different.

The RUSI report makes it clear: Sukhoi’s fighter line is a house built on imported parts. Not just high-tech microelectronics, but machining tools, composite materials, engine components, specialty alloys, CNC milling equipment, and avionics-grade chemicals Russia does not produce at scale or to required tolerances.

In other words: the Su-30, Su-34, Su-35, and Su-57 are Russian in the same way a teenager’s “custom gaming PC” is custom; most of the important pieces still come from somewhere else.

Russia can assemble them. Russia cannot fully supply them. The difference matters.

Because wars of attrition eventually become wars of manufacturing. And manufacturing becomes a war of supply chains.

The Sukhoi bureau, now folded into the United Aircraft Corporation after a decade of financial drama, is responsible for almost every advanced Russian fighter in service today.

The Su-30MK multirole fighter. The Su-34 strike aircraft. The Su-35 air-superiority platform. And the Su-57, which Russia keeps insisting is operational despite a total fleet size smaller than the cast of a mid-budget Netflix series.

All of these aircraft share a problem: parts.

Western machine tools are irreplaceable. Things like German cutting machines, Japanese CNC lathes, Taiwanese milling systems, and even critical engine tooling comes from places that aren’t Moscow.

And here’s the punchline: Russia has been trying to replace these foreign systems since 2014. The progress is… not encouraging.

Some factories have reverted to Soviet-era equipment that is aging, unreliable, and incapable of maintaining tolerances required for fifth-generation aircraft. Others rely on smuggled machine tools routed through Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Serbia, or the UAE.

RUSI notes that Russia’s dependency in certain sub-sectors has increased since sanctions, not decreased.

So, when Moscow boasts that Sukhoi production is “expanding,” what that usually means is they found an obscure Czech drilling machine on eBay and smuggled it in under a fake invoice labeled “industrial refrigerator parts.”

It’s sustainable… until someone decides to shut the door.

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