Franticfrank
New Member
India is indeed going totally western. Aside from upgrading their MIG29s, they're buying P8 Poseidons, C130Js and Rafales. So probably, the SU35 is out of the question for now.
To be honest, Russia needs to buy some Chinese fighters in order to keep up with the West.
You know, you'll be shot dead if you say this in Russia. Just joking!
Without the big traditional customers like China and India, where will the Russians find market for their flankers? Will Venezuela be a potential big customers? Beside that I can only think of Indonesia, Vietnam and Malaysia whose purchase power are relatively small.
totally western?
then, what about pak-fa/fgfa, follow-on mki orders, brahmos, etc?
---------- Post added at 08:54 AM ---------- Previous post was at 07:37 AM ----------
if russian and chinese leadership were more global in their thinking, and better strategists in the new great game, they'd involve their diplomatic and technical corps more proactively in the iran-nuclear situation. should that dilemma be resolved without armed conflict, and with the removal of un sanctions, iran would become, immediately, both a potential fulcrum for politico/economic leverage in the region and an ideal market for a variety of military hardware packages, including, and especially, a 4 to 4++ gen multi-role combat aircraft. under present circumstances, russia is best positioned to exploit this market as the chinese military aircraft inductry is hobbled by lagging turbofan development and production issues.
simply put, in the very near term, iran could potentially be a market for ~ 250 su-35/mk2.
in the longer term, iran could potentially be a market for ~ 250 fc-20.
When was the last time a country imported more than 200 modern fighters?