Ayi, don’t get emotional and start stirring things up here. The work with the Egyptian Air Force is far from over—it's actually at a critical stage. How did we jump to “they missed their chance and can’t buy it anymore” when we’re nowhere near that point yet? This time last year you were praising Egypt for being sensible and getting on the right track, and now suddenly it’s “brain-damaged,” “unworthy,” “preparing for national collapse”? And if the deal goes through next year, how exactly are you going to walk all that back…
Right now, the American position is actually not the main obstacle. The biggest hurdles are coming from areas no one anticipated before. Both sides negotiating are in a difficult position, but they are trying hard to find solutions.
As for this claim that “the Egyptian Air Force looks down on Chinese jets”—that’s a notion from several versions ago. At this moment, there is no potential customer in the world more enthusiastic about the J-10CE than Egypt. In fact, part of the problem arises precisely because the Egyptians like the aircraft too much. If they merely saw the J-10CE as a cheap Rafale substitute, things would actually be easier. But Egypt’s issues cannot be solved by buying a small batch just for show—their ambitions, realistically speaking, are far greater than those of Pakistan, Indonesia, or Azerbaijan.
Sisi’s personal will projected onto this matter means that, if finalized, this would be an unprecedented export achievement for China’s high-end aviation equipment. Egypt wants to become the largest super-user of the J-10CE. Naturally, something like that cannot be casually settled in just a year or two. Even when we were buying just 24 Su-35s back in the day, it still dragged on for many years.