Iaf mirages are actually being upgraded substantially, at exhorbitant cost. Anyways, what I said was based on a usaf officer who was surprised the PAF was more interested in tactics to counter the mirages rather than the flankers. This was published a while back. It has nothing to do with my theories or opinions.

Not every program is a worth $380bil (lifecycle over $1.1trillion). If one imagines what aircraft is/are delivered for that money, it makes one’s head ache quite badly.

The truth is that economists have always known that molopoly and monopsony, as well as government intervention (not to mention wholesale bribing and “lobbying”) is an inefficient system of production.

This basic truth can be twisted all one likes but in the end comes to roost.

The other problem is the evolution of aircombat ala Augustine’s Rule 16:

In the year 2054, the entire defence budget will purchase just one aircraft. This aircraft will have to be shared by the Air Force and Navy 3½ days each per week except for leap year, when it will be made available to the Marines for the extra day.”
Read more: http://www.grandestrategy.com/2012/09/683485943943.html#ixzz2XUyFFJE0

And Rule #18:

“It is very expensive to achieve high unreliability. It is not uncommon to increase the cost of an item by a factor of ten for each factor of ten degradation accomplished.” (#18)
Read more: http://www.grandestrategy.com/2012/09/683485943943.html#ixzz2XUyPm2IU

Y-20Bacon started this to divert his gaff from claiming the Argentinians were sold on the F-1 and were not interested in JF-17s. 😀

The platform counts, but not as much as some of us here would believe. Its also a question of tactics, pilot training, etc.

A Russian top pilot on an Su-35 FLANKER would be a hard act to beat.

Regarding actual exercise – the JF-17s were involved in a recent Chinese exercise where they bested the Chinese FLANKERs. What the exact setup was is not known of course. Nor is it known which flavor of FLANKERs these were.

For me there is a huge difference between Su-27s and the Su-35. In many ways the older Su-27s are aerodynamically superior to the Indian MKIs. I am surprised the Indians didn’t go for the Su-35s. They are really a class all their own in the flanker family.

Sometimes its not the fancy thrust vectoring, or the giant radar set. Sometimes when you are too focused on those things you lose track of what really matters – the whole, the training, tactics, the strategy, the motivation, the tempo of operations and of course fate or luck, however you would have it.

The weakest bits of the jsf are:

1. It is designed to fight yesterday’s war, not the war against China.

2. It assumes air superiority as given, focusing on being an attack weapon.

3. The program is usinh yesterday’s methods to build tomorrow’s fighter. Rapid prototyping and 3d printing makes building structures simple. The fixed structures emphasis is so passe.

3 airframes would have made so much more sense.

Actually no, there is a difference between the FC-1 and JF-17. Starting from the ejection seat, to electronics and avionics, etc. The details of which are not fully available in the public. Basically the PAF version is a higher end version with various bits and pieces from all over the world including controversially, Israel.

The basic export FC-1 is mainly a cheaper version made with maximum chinese parts and little foreign content (even the RD-93 is on its way out).