Net Centric Tantric:

http://www.wired.com/politics/security/magazine/15-12/ff_futurewar

Andrey Fomin’s article on the Su-35 from ‘Take-Off’ 06/07, apologies if repeat post.

http://www.sukhoi.org/files/su_news_29-08-07_eng.pdf

Broncho, as mentioned earlier, the so-called “joint venture” is only on paper. Practically it is licence production only.

In order to stymie the indigenous MCA, the IAF and Defence ministry have disguised this purchase agreement as “co-development” and “50-50 partnership”. The Indian taxpayer is being totally misled.

Agreed, the Indian taxpayer is being misled but taxpayers are always misled- especially on defence procurement issues/costs, even blatant (public money) bribes hardly cause ripples anymore.
However, people seem to be overlooking some important points.

Firstly, the death of the MCA is at least partially due to technical reasons in that that Indian industry is simply not capable of completing such a programme in a realistic time frame, arguments such as ‘so what if it’s inferior to PAK-FA/F-22? so long as it benefits Indian aerospace’ are militarily facile.

Secondly, with Russian govt. coffers bursting at the seams, Indian money (though welcome) is no longer relevant. In fact, in at least the last 12 months it has been the Indian govt/MOD that has been clamouring for T-50 involvement. It’s laughable that the Indian press is touting this as the ‘Indo-Russian FGFA JV”- though the 50/50 JV will be the MKI-ising of PAK-FA and has nothing to do with RuAF’s variant, as already eloquently explained by Abhimanyu, and clearly defined by M. Pogosyan a month ago.

In the grand scheme of things, if MKI-ising/license production of PAK-FA is not worth $5billion then those detractors should take a serious look at contemprorary programme costs and not some ill-conceived “CBA doin’ Mach 5 over one’s head”.

PM Manmohan Singh arrives in Moscow today, and ITAR-TASS reports an Indo-Russian technical & management team will formally ink the work-share and investment contracts between Nov.12-14. So things will be allot clearer shortly.

Who’s working on what for the definitive PAK-FA engine (sorry english not available- but in short absolutely everybody).
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What we get now from Russia is a customised PAK-FA , Much similar to MKI type project

This is nothing new, the Indian press reported A.K. Anthony saying as much in September. The Russian press quoted M. Pogosyan as referring to specific development of Russian and Indo-Russian variant(s) at MAKS’07.
So clearly in the timeframe from January ’till mid-summer the technical co-operation/ development specifics were hammered out.

Sukhoi’s prime motive was to bring down development/unit costs, whilst sharing as little as possible other than airframe & engines, and they must have used their political influences to finish off the MiG 5G contender, maybe even the Su-30MKI cost escalations were part of such maneuverings, considering HAL production of components for Irkutsk.

Regardless, in customising & indigenising weopons systems for the “boondoggle”MKI, the Indians get huge aerospace knowledge & benefits, which would never be realistically achievable by the MCA- especially if the LCA experience is anything to go by.

Putting aside nationalistic chest-beating, maybe irritable Indians should observe Chinese & Japanese 5G developments to realise how difficult & prohibitively expensive developing such a warplane is.

Compare its defence spending and defence-related R&D funding with US. Does it come close?

The Russian Federation is NOT the USSR, nor does its leadership have any desire to resurrect that hugely inefficient & flawed leviathon.
Russia may be evolving into a thoroughly modern autocracy, one that is at odds with ‘Western’ political & economic desires, but that is their business.

Russian military reform is now affordable, and the dynamic of it’s restructuring will deliver modern, net-centric, compact forces which will be indicative of Russian national security requirements, which will probably not include power projection on some decrepit, despotic country floating on a lake of crude.

Russia is not fighting 2 (illegal?) wars -the costs of which will be paid be generation(s) of US citizens, factor-in huge US BoP deficit, national debt, economic slowdown etc. etc. Now tell me, whose long-term future looks the rosier? It appears insolence is easier than self-deceit.

Sergei Ivanov visits Irkutsk:
http://pilot.strizhi.info/2007/11/03/4918

Now it was delayed again to 2012.
This fighter seem to be piperdream which won’t fly ever?!:D :diablo:

Yeah, it kinda reminds me of when RBE2 was gonna be replaced with a GaN AESA to much self-congratulation by Thales…then GaN became GaAs…when? oh, sometime ‘soon’…but remains RBE2. Sort of explains why export orders are a pipe-dream too.

But seriously, there is no PAK-FA programme, the Russians merely wanted to swindle the Indians out of $10 billion- now that’s what I call gangster capitalism! Though personally I would have asked for Euros.