medal64, actually it is confirmed that in the earlier part of this decade, China had refused to partner/fund Russia’s FGFA programme (not particularly the PAK-fa), because it was pursuing its own J-XX programme.

I think MiG/TsAGI approached the Chinese in an effort to recoup some of their huge expenses in their FGFA programme (probably MiG 1.44 or a derivative). In fact rumour has it much of MiG’s efforts will be in J-XX, moreso even than JF-17.

I don’t believe that Sukhoi approached the Chinese with the T-50 at any time.

Humorous addenda: The link for post #2 regarding Indo-Russian FGFA has done an NPO Saturn and removed the ‘Blue Raptorski’ pic from it’s article & inserted an Su-30!!…it may mean nothing but…

Otaku, the $8 billion ‘contribution’ from India may practically only be the licence manufacturing fee, in the “disguise” of contribution.

So the fee is for IPRs for local manufacture by HAL, and not merely the assembly of kits?

That’s obviously isn’t it. I think it was clear from the beginning, that the Indian PAK FA would differ in terms of avionics only and that India wouldn’t be able to contribute anything else, as Sukhois development efforts are to advanced.

It may have been clear to those who could read-between-the-lines, but to their respective publics it was being spun as -at best a new project (esp. in India) and at worst a PAK-FA spin-off.

Even on Russian forums last month the query was why were Indian MoD/AF/HAL officials being shown PAK-FA assembly at YG KnAAPO if that ‘jv’ was another project.

Anyways, PAK-FA MKI sounds cool to me. Congrats to Abhimanyu for being spot on months ago. Any word on what the hefty $8 billion Indian ‘contribution’ will be spent on? Does it include aircraft batches?