Russia has suspended flights of one of its main fighter jets, the Sukhoi Su-27, until an investigation is completed into the causes of a crash earlier this week in the Far East, local news agencies reported. Rescue teams have discovered the pilot's body and fragments of the wrecked jet, which went missing from radar screens on Thursday while performing a scheduled flight, RIA and TASS quoted a defence ministry spokesman as saying on Saturday.

"Until the reasons of the wreckage of the Su-27 jet in the Khabarovsk region are discovered, flights of this type of aircraft are temporarily suspended," the spokesman said, according to RIA. The Su-27, codenamed "Flanker-B" by Nato, was first introduced in the 1980s and made the Soviet Union and its communist allies competitive with leading western bloc countries using fighters like the US F-15 and F-16.

But many of the Soviet-built aircraft are now old and unsafe and Russia's once-formidable air force is in dire need of new planes capable of fighting modern, hi-tech wars. Last year, Russia postponed the maiden flight of its first fifth-generation fighter aircraft until 2010. The new plane, also built by military and civilian aircraft manufacturer Sukhoi, is seen as Moscow's challenge to the US-built F-22 Raptor combat jet.

Copyright Reuters, 2010