Russia's 'next-gen' aircraft exposed as AI bluff
One of the fronts of the war in Ukraine is the information war. Kremlin propaganda not only attempts to justify the assault on Ukraine but also tries to intimidate the rest of the world with the supposed might of the Russian arms industry. However, propagandists from Russia Today made an embarrassing blunder.
Kremlin propaganda regularly tries to portray Russia as a country with a thriving research-industrial complex, systematically creating modern, avant-garde weaponry sometimes without equivalents in the world.
This has little to do with the truth—the defense sector, which was innovative during Soviet times, is now a shadow of its former power. Russian weaponry presented as new armaments is often either dusted-off projects from the Soviet era or equipment that is failed, unfinished, and does not meet the specifications.
An example is the Lada-class submarines (project 677) or the heavy tank support fighting vehicles, Terminator.
Russian 6th generation aircraft
That’s why the report from Russia Today about the 6th generation combat aircraft being developed in Russia—while the Su-57 from the previous generation still hasn’t been perfected—raised many doubts.
Illustrations released by the Russians of the purportedly developed futuristic machine depicted—as calculated by Defence24—a plane with three engines, a huge tail (future machines from the USA or China lack this), and wings resembling those from the Su-27 aircraft from the 1980s. The machine also had a mysterious rounded shape under the fuselage with an unknown role.
Russian aircraft of the future according to AI
The mystery of the Russian superweapon was quickly exposed because propagandists from Russia Today did not remove the watermark of Grok—an online service that allows for generating images.
The unusual aircraft therefore stands no chance of joining the gallery of "Putin’s Parade Weapons"—equipment presented during military parades, whose weaknesses were revealed by the war in Ukraine.
The alleged Russian superweapon turned out to be not only the imagination of propagandists but also an example that the "Russian aircraft of the future" is a collage of elements taken from machines developed over 40 years ago.
