I loved the MiG-25, it was sad to see it out of service in the Indian air force. What a beautiful beast!! I would love to see the MiG-31 get some international orders. Who knows, maybe India would buy some for recon.

yes they do look like those. Well, Iranians probably don’t have anything against skiiing and I dare say one wouldn’t want to go skiing in a skirt or something revealing in the first place 😀

I think that Chinese influence has not really broken through in South America yet. I do believe that China right now is focusing more in Africa, but I do see that influence expanding to South America. Although, I know there are intelligence reports out there talking of huge shipments of chinese arms to Bolivia via Venezuela and even via Brazil.

I for one would like to see a much broader partnership particularly with Brazil and Argentina.

As for the F-7G, its a wonderful little aircraft. My country bought some recently (Bangladesh), and I do believe its got great utility. I know that in the PAF the F-7PG was able to out turn the F-16 in combat. Range has been significantly improved over past MiG-21 derivatives but the Achilles heel of BVR still remains. However, with the new radar (as on the Bangladeshi F-7BG) it is possible to have some limited BVR capability, and may just be able to carry the SD-10, while not at its full range, at about 60% of the SD-10s range, still making it a viable BVR missile. However, loadout would still remain a problem. If you must add a BVR capability, I would go with one BVR centerline (we’d need to engineer that a bit), two drop tanks and two WVR.

Its great for maintaining territorial integrity, keeping your airforce flying, and as an interceptor against all but the BVR equiped crowd. And even there, the F-7G could just get lucky and sneak in.

Oh, that’s Huitong’s old website, I even didn’t open it…:D

BTW, I’m not against the reported how much money for 200 airframe sort of thing, but no such reports said anything about what will happen if Chinese manufactures more? You can’t read across from 2.7 billion USD for 200 units to you only can manufacture 200 units? To find out clues, then we have to examine the basic & visible facts. .

Ok, let’s back to track. It seems Pakistan will do the overall marketing for JF-17 worldwide or CAC still can push its FC-1 to other countries using exactly JF-17 model? For example, it can push to Egypt like the K-8E? Which means building production line there like that of K-8E and modified it if necessary to suit customer’s particular requirements? But of course that’s oly my wild thinking.

hey Pinko, I once heard there was some form of division of labor there as to which countries pakistan will market to and which ones CAC will.

Pit: that was really well answered. I agree with you there, its not as easy as it sounds . cheers and best of luck with those Flankers.

About the future, what do you think will be Venezuela’s next buy? what do you think SHOULD be Venezuela’s next buy?