Russia holding back Su-30 supplies is a retarded prospect that completely ignores the commercial, strategic, and geo-political ties between India and Russia. It won’t happen.

IMO, the article shows only one side of the story, these contracts were signed when Russia was desperately looking for customers of its massive arms industry, but with the massive growth in russia, the cost of materials as well as skilled manpower has gone up. It is possible that the cost escalation might have been much more than what either sides might have anticipated. If you look at it from the russian view point, they are bound to lose if they sell spares at the current rate and lose more if indians cancel further orders. Regardless of whatever situation it might be, a contract is a contract and it should be respected by both sides. If russians would have stuck to the price escalation as per the contract terms, they might have suffered a few losses, but nothing that couldn’t have been regained from the next deal or co development.

As more nations adopt stealthy designs, the current generation of AWACS (massive L-band sensor) becomes less and less effective. The future equivalent capability is provided by sensor data sharing in a network centric environment via narrow beam LPI data links. :dev2:

Tankers will always be valuable because more fuel provides better survivability through increased range (ability to skirt around a threat instead of passing over it due to lack of fuel) and the ability to operate at higher speeds.

The need for EW depends upon the particular scenario and threats that could prevent accomplishing the mission’s objectives. EW could take the form of self protection jamming (effective) or dedicated jammers (becoming less effective every day). Either way, stealth improves the effectiveness of EW.

The good thing about most AWACS platforms is that they are huge. The AESA array and the radar computers can always be upgraded to the next generation stuff without affecting the airframe much, although that would come at a price 🙂

PS : Is any airforce planning to upgrade its older awacs platform or has done it already ?

a n00b question, are those internal bays conjoint ?

since nowadays a lot of a2a missiles are being modified as SAM’s will it be possible to do the reverse and fit that monstrous long range missile of s 400 system in the PAK FA internal bay as a really long range tanker/awacs killer ?