Maybe the tender should be about supply by any tenable means, from purchase to leasing to even subletting another owner, and have it span operational costs for the period of say 15 years.

The previous referendum was to save the money for social programs. It had nothing to do with the Gripen choice per se.

The Brazilian navy cannot protect a multi-billion dollar carrier from submarine attack and I suspect they will be equally vulnerable to modern sea skimmers. A helicopter platform has more missions to take advantage of, especially in a natural disaster.

You will always grab the largest multirole and the biggest possible strike platform. The Su-30SM is inferior to the Su-35S. The Su-34, although multiple strike role, isn’t a good multirole candidate. MiG-29SMT doesn’t deserve mention in this limited scope. The MiG-31 is neither a true multirole nor a strike platform.

So is this the equivalence of PVO or VVS air forces?

If the Soviet designers had introduced a single engine design along the lines of an upscale Su-22 strike fighter using an engine from either Tu-22M3 or Tu-160, what weight class would it lay? And does doing so suddenly change Tu-22M into a heavy fighter-bomber? It all is quite complicated and subjective.

F-106 was 85-90% the size of Mirage IV.

AL-31 evolved a generation and was renamed. RD-33 has not.

Deino,

The same issues that prevent MiG-23 export success are what prevent J-10 export success. Take the western equivalent, the F-16. It had a long productive run, built mostly on the pretense that buying F-16’s in the USAF makes the F-15 – the crown Jewel – cheaper to operate. MiG-23 used its own unique production techniques, own engine, own gun, own radar, etc. Building the MiG-23 was absolutely no benefit to any other Soviet airframe. (Ignoring MiG-27) The J-10 suffers a similar fate other than drawing resources away from the J-11, J-15, and J-16 Flanker programs. The only exception is the J-10 using an indigenous engine, which has slowly been introduced.