Let’s not forget, in the past 5 years, UAE announced they were buying the Typhoon only to back out of contract negotiations, then entered negotiations with Dassault, all the while negotiating with Boeing on the F-18. To make the situation more muddled, they’ve been using both overt and back channel pressure to lobby for an F-35 purchase.
In summation, this may be a way to extract the lowest contract cost from one of the competitors, even Russian Su-35’s as rumored. They may just be fed up with the US dragging their feet on approving FMS deals. It could be a ploy to pressure an early F-35 sale. What I doubt is that UAE is truly looking to develop a joint fifth generation aircraft.
That’s why i wrote ‘probably’. Noone here knows on 100% – what’s in their minds, but seeing that just two weeks ago they bought 12% of the ‘Russian Helicopters’ Holding, i wouldn’t be very surprised, if they would like to have another one stake in the aircraft industry, in the form of joint enterprise that will be developing, producing and selling 5gen. lightweight fighters to countries who can’t or don’t want to buy, for some reasons, Russian PAK FA, US F-35 or Chinese J-31.
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