I think they’re well aware of that. After all, they’re flying Tu-160’s that were never exported. The US never exported B-2s, or B-52s. Strategic bombing is not a capability you develop for business reasons, it isn’t a ‘lowest common denominator’ that many countries want/need, but is a strategic endeavor that few countries can afford.

Anyhow, until there’s more real info (and not just drawings from 1980) there’s not much to discuss. Though it’s 99% likely it will look like a B-2/X-45/X-47/Taranis/Neuron/Skat and if they want (high) supersonic speeds, variable-cycle engines are likely in a ~2025 timeframe.

Great job, only criticism is that it might be instructive to integrate the long range early warning radar coverage with that of the air defense radar coverage. The view you used of the LREW was more or less ‘north african’ centered (or mediterranean/atlantic), but I think integrating it into the more ‘semi-polar’ / Ural viewpoint used to show coverage over the entire body of Russia would be useful, not least because I believe it covers some of that ‘radar gap’ in the center and towards the pole. It may be necessary to find some more specific numbers on range/altitude correlations at least to give estimates at max range/ 75%/ 50%. But again, great job, you obviously enjoy doing this. Oh, the bit about ‘dark corners of the internet’ and debates on wheel well placement was choice. 😉

I believe the UAE M2K-9’s also bring Link 16 to the table, the lack of which in C models is a serious disadvantage when compared to ANY platform having that advantage (such as the F-5BRs).

Center of Gravity is probably more of a concern than aesthetics, but I think ‘stretching’ out the ‘hump’ so it shrinks quicker behind the canopy, but extends further along the fuselage would result in both good CoG (balancing extra cockpit weight) AND aesthetics.

Enlarging the main missile bay would be interesting… If the ‘shoulder’ fairings outside the intakes are indeed A2A bays, I wonder how possible it would be to extend them the full wing chord to hold another set of missiles (which would free space in the central bays for more long range missiles).

Perhaps it makes more sense to develop jet fuel additives that would upon vaporisation / decomposition/ whose combustion products would shift the IR emission of the plume further down the NIR / far IR, attenuation of which would happen within a short distance of travel in the ambient air.

Water droplet injection into exhaust? It couldn’t be used all the time, but a small reservoir sufficient to activate when a missile is incoming seems POTENTIALLY viable as an adjunct to other IR counter-measures.

well, I don’t speak French, but #15 has 4.5m dimension and word missile in description. isn’t R-73 less than 3m long?

For aerodynamics, it’s going to need some sort of tapered ‘nose’ and ‘tail’ besides the volume needed for the missile itself. …And it does give a bit more room, if for example a modular capability was envisioned, allowing R-73/? missiles for A2A missions yet able to accomodate a FLIR/designation system for strike missions. It looks a LITTLE tight for that, but then again, the hardware could be split between both fairings if need be.

the Su-50 design … has to compete with the F-35 for export-customers.

…Obviously, they could well be considered ‘contemporaries’ of each other, and certainly can be expected to eventually be competing against each other in other ways., but I wouldn’t exactly say that the Su-50 will be competing for exports with F-35.

F-35’s maintenance regime is enough of a marketing scheme for Sukhoi by itself. Anyone willing to accept that in the first place is practically by definition already so intent on demonstrating close relationship with the US that they would not realistically consider inducting the Su-50 instead. Perhaps there may be a very few marginal cases where both could be considered, but they are not going to be competing against each other at large. IMHO.

The further shares than are issued in total (by far held privately), not necessarily further shares for themselves …I can see how that wasn’t written perfectly clearly.
I strongly doubt EADS would like such an idea, but it seemed worth mentioning as an option to provide further capital if it’s needed, while allowing the partner states to potentially get this money back (or get their money’s worth). Of course, Germany isn’t particularly enamored of part-owning EADS in the first place (or they would already) and it’s pretty clear they don’t see any room in their budget for it, whether or not they “get their money’s worth”…. [/shrug]