And whatever happened to the idea of equipping hypersonic brahmos 2 to P-15B?

lol, maybe for MLU…

The F-22 and F-35 systems were integrated because they had to be integrated; the related tasks of EMCON and sensor fusion demanded computing power that (even in 1995) meant big processor banks that had to be shared because of practical space/weight/power/cooling limits.

Given the extraordinary increase in computing performance per watt over the last several decades, I am slightly puzzled by the apparently relentless upward march of power/cooling requirements.

T-50’s secondary combat capability and non-Chinese provenance would be major selling points, I expect. Pakistan doesn’t have many options going forward to mitigate its dependence on China. Scrounging F-16s will only get you so far.

mmm, China is going to have to do something about that eventually. Flying the leadership around in another nation’s jet is no image for a superpower.

Problem is, it won’t be anytime soon. Even if the joint Sino-Russian widebody with 2x30ton-class engines pans out by mid-2020s, rumour has it that it will be optimised for short haul trips.

In its original form the MiG-29 was a highly specialised aircraft with little utility outside the mass air war over Germany and Eastern Europe for which it was designed. It can hardly be taken as a proxy for modern Russian aircraft. MTBO was not a concern in the shadow of Götterdämmerung, maximum performance for minimum cost was. The major redesign the Fulcrum has undergone since the Cold War (MiG-29M and from there to MiG-29K) has produced a much more well-rounded platform, better suited to the export market and indeed to Russia’s post-Cold War domestic requirements, at the cost of eroding much of the distinction between itself and the Flanker. Nonetheless, Russia’s failure to take advantage of the existing AL-31 engine and to develop its own J-10-ski represents, perhaps, a greater missed opportunity than that of any other nation.

Why has it been so long before India got their in house overhaul fasility for MKI?

AFAIK, it was only negotiated with the latest batch of MKIs signed a few years ago.

So basically you think it looks cool…

On the contrary, J-10 is one of the less aesthetically attractive Eurocanards — uglier than Rafale, certainly. Nonetheless, it embodies all the qualities that made F-16 such a laudable and successful platform, with a more advanced aerodynamic design offering improved performance and agility (plus a Typhoon-style variable intake — DSI on J-10B — to take full advantage of those possibilities), and without the performance-sapping (and yes, ugly) modifications that’ve been required to keep F-16 competitive in the latter stages of its life.

As such, J-10 is a worthy successor to the F-16 heritage, amidst a gaggle of contemporaries falling mostly into one of two categories — those that even the manufacturing nations themselves can neither afford to buy nor operate, let alone export — and significantly smaller and mostly less sophisticated aircraft (JF-17, T-50, Gripen, Tejas) that are in another class of capability all together.

The non-Chinese project that comes closest to the superb balance of J-10 is Gripen E/F. But as laudable and sorely-needed as that aircraft is, the Chinese deserve credit for getting it right the first time around.

in otherwords, another Mirage 2000.

In that direction, yes. Such would’ve been both easier on the French pocketbook — which of course is far more limited than when Rafale was designed — and likely more attractive on the export market as well (save perhaps in Korea and Singapore, where they lost anyway).