Russia has plenty of money for both Pakfa,Pakda and LMFS and multiple UCAVs so it does not have to be one first then the other. How is a UCAV supposed to make a manned fighter outdated that’s a ridiculous concept, UCAV are for strike only and so far only manned fighters can do the air to air mission effectively. Pakda is a project for Tupolev to start building heavy bombers again and LMFS will almost certainly be given to RAC Mig as Sukhoi KnAAPO production capacity for 10+ years will be full building Pakfa and Su35. Or do you expect RAC Mig to only build Mig29 types and UCAV for the next 15 years? Irkutsk can be given contract to help build LMFS as well as Mig though. In addition to 200-300 Pakfa that will be built for Russian VVS by Sukhoi KnAAPO, VVS still needs more stealth fighters to be build by RAC Mig that are twice as cheap and cheaper to maintain and VVS needs about 300 of them. LMFS could along with navalized Pakfa prove to be very useful for Russian Navy as well. Mig35 is just an interim figher that is why VVS does not want to buy it in numbers,the new radar,ols, all weapon systems,ecm and engines can be used from the Mig35 and thats %60 of the work so LMFS project should be much cheaper than Pakfa

It will certainly not be before Pak-Da program gotten their share of the pie.
Whats Next then, a bunch of UAV programs.. which in the end just might render the LMFS completly outdated.

The shorter range is what i question the most about LMFS.

Hard to know what the F35 should be compared to maybe F7U Cutlass in F35 being underpowered and having terrible acceleration and maneuverability and being overpriced and difficult to maintain in the field. F35 is like a Yak141 idea gone wrong and F35 is going to be known as one of the biggest failures and blunders in military aviation history

Unfortunately all you said about Mig25 is %100 complete lies and bullsh*t, its nothing more than pathetic US cold war era propaganda downplaying enemy tech in order to keep USAF Nato personel felling nice,safe and cozy and not highly demoralized as if the truth was disclosed at the high threat the Mig25 really was.
much slower and less maneuverable than a XB70 ahaha WTF lol what are you smoking?:stupid: Of course XB70 is world renowned and famous for its great maneuverability it can do cobra and stuff? :very_drunk:
Mig25R was clocked over Israel at Mach 3.4+ in 1971, Mig25 can easily exceed Mach3 safely without damaging its engines or fuselage and in an emergency even reach near Mach 3.5 at the cost of engine damage but if need be damaging 2 Mig25 engines is a good tradeoff for a B70 or SR71 kill not to mention Mig25 engines are not terribly expensive. Mig25 was restricted by orders not physically in peace time normal flights to M2.8 Only to extend service life and overhaul time of its engines,if a real foreign intruder appeared the Mach 2.8 restriction order was completely removed. Mig25 was a good deal faster than B70 and with its phenominal climb rate and speed and the fact it was specifically designed to shoot down B70.
Mig25 was not of poor quality but was of good quality and had a quite good reliability service record and was robustly well built, that is quality, especially compared to crappy poor quality US built planes of the time such as F104 and F16A which had abysmal reliability and safety record with hundreds of each type crashing in less than a decade,so much for western quality.
Russia built 1186 Mig25 and 400+Mig31 Mach3+ fighters and was the only country in the world to mass produce a Mach3 fighters which were reliable and easily serviceable under rough conditions by comparison US only build 32 SR71+13 A12 and 2XB70, pathetic. Mig25 was not very maintenance extensive and quick to maintain and get flight ready for the next flight by contrast SR71 was a hangar queen that needed hundrerds of hours of maintenance and very long intervals after each flight and was absurdly expensive to maintain and built and as a result completely unsuited to be mass produced as an Interceptor.
Also the Sukhoi T4 project Mach 3 long range interceptor and missile carrier would of definitely NOT been cancelled if the XB70 was not cancelled http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sukhoi_T-4

Lastly a MIG-25 was mentioned, as the USSR response to the B-70. When one was handed over to us in Japan, it was found out that it was so poor quality there was a placard on the panel that said “dont exceed mach 2.8”. Also its maneuverablity was in question. So how was a plane that was much slower and less maneuverable going to shoot down the B-70?

It remains that IMO NcNamara and his “whiz kids” that gave us the Edsel were idiots!!!!!!

Im sure Russian designers can do much better then the J31 if given the green light but they can’t just make something to their liking until the Russian Mod sets a requirement for a particular type of airframe. Even though Pakfa can be used as a Mig31 replacement as Pakfa is capable of Mach 2.6+ unlike the F22 which is limited to less than Mach 2 due to its one piece canopy starting to melt at high speed hence exactly why Pakfa uses a stronger 2 piece canopy made of more heat resistant material for high speed flight,still Mig31 is faster and its replacement should be even better and have longer ranger.

What Russian VVS needs is a multirole very heavy interceptor, long range escort fighter for Pakda,Tu160,Tu22M and strike aircraft missile carrier, have antisat capability and perhaps fast recon that would be a Mig31,Mig25R and Tu22M replacement as Pakda design might have its merits I hope,but it cannot be a Tu22M replacement as Pakda is not mach2+ capable. This new aircraft could be something like a highly modernized Sukhoi T4 but smaller have proper stealth shaping and have more modern aerodynamics but use high temperature resistant radar absorbing composite materials instead of titanium, be capable of Mach3.75 and sustained cruising speed of Mach3 and be able to cruise at 85,000ft This aircraft should use either 2,3 or even 4 type 30 second phase engines as planned on the Pakfa, have a very large internal fuel load and have a very large internal weapons bay that is significantly larger than the Pakfa or any other contemporary fighter so it can carry large amounts of long range air to air and air to ground missiles and be able to carry internally the Onix 2 hypersonic air to surface missile that is currently under development. It would be an unstoppable carrier killer, awacs and tanker killer and strike platform. Yes it would be very expensive probably $250 million-$300 million a piece but Russian Military budget is already $150 billion + if adjusted for CPP and is growing and will quite possibly be around $250 billion annually next decade so Russia can still afford about 50-75 or so of such platforms. Mig should be given the task of this project as they have the experience with the Mig31 design but with Sukhoi assistance as Mig is languishing with currently nothing else to do than making modernized Mig29 and some little UCAVs. Much better use of money than all that billion of $ that was wasted on those useless stupid olimpics.

hopefully 12 new Su35S will be delivered to VVS this year as planned. So 10 or so Su35S are just sitting somewhere at KnAAZ waiting to be delivered all at once as a full years production including Su35S finished in March or something, very strange, why not deliver them 3 at a time like NAPO do every few months its so much more sensible. It will be interesting to see if the Su35S also revert to using the old camo as 1-4 and have the classic Soviet red star as the new NAPO Su30 04 and others apparently do now.

KnAAZ still has time for the Su-35S deliveries. A Whole month or so.

My Guess is that they will deliver a larger batch of Su-35S at the end of the year.