Funny, I have often seen you on my side of the tracks!

Just because you see fit to turn every thread into a discussion about F-35 and how everyone should buy it doesn’t make it so. I rarely read or post in the F-35 discussion threads because the ongoing development of that platform doesn’t interest me much. And it seems your interest in T-50, Tejas, Rafale, PLAAF, or whatever runs at about the same level, only there you are anyway, pushing the buy America barrow.. :rolleyes:

If Russia was going to sell T-50s to China then India would probably want something that could handle it, and the best available aircraft to counter T-50 is T-50.

Full stealth will come to the PAK FA with the second stage engines, new flattened exhaust & reshaped engine covers.

Unlikely. Everything about PAK FA to date suggests that Russia isn’t interested in compromising performance for gains in areas of marginal significance e.g. rear-sector RCS.

For a dedicated strike variant fielded ~2030 to succeed Su-34, sure…

They are sh!t scared even if someone sells knife to Japan, Taiwan, Vietnam and now Philippines also. Is Philippines also comes under core interest? It seems their core is always getting bigger and bigger as time pass.

What a nation considers its interests to be is largely a function of its ability to pursue them. As China’s strength grows, its sphere of interest will grow also. In this China is no different than any other nation. Consider America’s steadily growing sphere of interests from humble beginnings to the Monroe Doctrine to the Truman Doctrine to today’s global overwatch of all things, everywhere. As American hegemony declines, America will come to construe its interests more narrowly than it does today, much as British interests were steadily constrained post-WW2, mirroring the decline in British power.

F-35 might be just a little bit more discreet and less vulnerable than a Boeing 737 airframe…

Not so much need to be discreet when you can plonk JASSMs from long-range.

Sure, it’s not ‘sustainable’, but then neither are any Australian strike scenarios involving tanker-supported F-35 operations. The difference is that besides the token long-range strike capability P-8 brings with it a host of other useful capabilities in MPA, ASW, etc. F-35 … well, it can launch AMRAAMs I guess. But then so can Super Hornet.

Who needs F-35 when you have P-8s?

Not sure I follow.

My point was US spying on Brazil has probably sabotaged F/A-18s chances even if it might be the best fit for Brazil.

And I was suggesting that if you’re looking strictly at operational requirements and ‘value for money’ considerations that it’s Gripen E/F that takes the cake, not Super Hornet. Any Super Hornet buy would’ve been political through and through, so to suggest that it has been ‘derailed’ by politics is misleading. If anything the Snowden revelations have ‘re-railed’ the post-Lula political establishment into remembering what it should never have forgotten in the first place — that America is not Brazil’s friend.