If India and Russia were that close, China wouldn’t have been operating over 250 Flankers today. As always each country looks out for its own best interests.

US and India share a growing apprehension of being dominated/overshadowed by an ascendant China which, already the predominant power in Asia, will eventually overtake the US economically while matching it militarily, at least in the region. And this an apprehension shared by other traditional allies of the US including Japan, South Korea, Singapore and Australia.

Over the last few years, the Indian military has held more joint exercises with US forces than with those from any other country. At the same time Japan and India have been strengthening ties as well; they held the first ever joint naval exercise in 2012 and have already decided to make it regular affair.

Over the mid-to-long term the writing is on the wall and the Americans are as aware of it as anybody. Its more or less certain that the F-35 will be available to India, if it decides to pursue it. And as a rule, no otherwise prohibited access is given to non-source entities (there’s no way to control that information once its put out there).

The point is that China is becoming largest trading partner of so many countries and Chinese banks are now credit suppliers to large business groups. so it will be far easier for China to glean knowledge about F-35 if it sold to India or for that matter Turkey.
Turkey already betrayed Israel. China is too big of business opportunity and missile technology for them.
so it is Russia own interest to keep China on its side and offer them Su-35 and later PAK-FA down the road.

LookJSR, first the biggest leap of SU 35 ober SU 27 isnt 3D, but avionics. Would it be a sensible choice for Brazil on purely operational considerations? Probably. Mostly depending on operational costs and real PESA radar capabilities (not in terms of sheer power). But not on industrial and ToT terms.
Citing huge wing pods is a bit childish as none of us has any clue of real performance of EW suites.
And afaik, SU 35 wont have -by far- 70% of wet surface made of composites (as an example).
Even Sergei Bogdan quotes the extreme agility of Rafale btw (he had a flight in it, did you know?)

Little gift to you from PS 13 btw. Guess who it is?

I highly doubt composites are suitable for performance level of Su-35. It has to carry 11.5ton fuel internally and with large wingtip pods with 3D agility it need very strong structure.
rcs is reduced by several times compared to fourth generation fighter.

http://www.sukhoi.org/planes/military/su35/news/?id=4060
Fighter’s radar signature compared to the fourth generation of aircraft reduced several times due to conductive coating canopy, applying radar-absorbing coatings and reduced the number of protruding

Rafale agility is only when it is empty. when you load a sportscar like a truck its performance is severally degraded.
I will not put any value on TOT in this deal. it just make the deal more expensive by opening it more vendors with only one off commitment.

$34 billion at the current exchange rate (not including various programs budgeted under different heads). A defence budget of INR 2.04T equals 1.85% of a INR 110T GDP (based on Q2 results TY).

The point i am making is that India procurement and salary budget is combined. so if some thing not spent during the year on procurement. it reduces the actual budget.

That’s one of way of putting the fact, that the highest paid public servant in the country is a naval captain with an annual salary equaling USD 470,000.

These are just examples. on average salaries in Brazil are lot higher than India. you can see from Auto sales. i believe Brazil also spending like $240b drilling deep sea oil. so there procurement budget is very less.

The Gripen and Rafale will be in production till the end of the decade and probably beyond. Only the SH is nearing end of production.

As for the FAB, once it retires its Mirages it will have a fleet of just about 100 aircraft, all third generation of which the F-5E/Fs will start retiring in a few years. From the current force profile its quite obvious that they need a cost effective fighter that can be acquired in strength and not a small number of high end aircraft. The Gripen is the only one that fits the bill, to add to which domestically assembled Gripens will be an option for regional partners like Argentina and Uruguay.

I am not sure Gripen and Rafale will be in production at rate that will make it cheap. as by that time France and Sweden will be buy very less. USN still has to support several hundred superhornet fleet. so overall spares will be cheaper for F-18E.

Not to take this too far off-topic but India’s defence spending of around $38 billion amounts to 1.8% of its GDP in 2013. However this does not include the costs associated with the nuclear and strategic missile programs. Also I’m not sure if it includes military pensions. In any case, even accounting for that it will still remain under 2% of the GDP.

India defence spending is around $30b based on current exchange rate. I highly doubt GDP figures.

Its a little harder to get a handle on Brazil’s defence spending. From what I could gather it averages 1.5% of the GDP translating to around $30 billion (though some sources claimed figures under $10 billion), but has decreased hugely after recent budget cuts.

They’re personnel costs must be fairly high (or their defence budget isn’t completely utilized), because there’s not a lot equipment to show for it. Even a small military like Singapore for example, while not supporting a comparably large standing army appears otherwise more suited to fighting a conventional war. Then again, I suppose Brazil’s military has probably been geared over the decades to fight domestic insurgencies rather than foreign invasions

brazil salaries are generally high.
http://riotimesonline.com/brazil-news/front-page/transparency-in-brazil-reveals-super-salaries/#

In either case, given the sheer shortage of fourth generation aircraft in its fleet, the Gripen appears to make better sense assuming an envisioned expansion of the fleet beyond the 36 aircraft in question.

Between the Rafale and Super Hornet, the SH will probably work out to be a lot cheaper. However, unlike the Rafale its going out of production soon and follow-on orders will stop being option after a point. On the other hand, once the F-35 is in production, I wouldn’t totally discount the possibility of ex-USN or ex-RAAF SHs becoming available somewhere down the line.

Gripen/SH/Rafale does not make any sense for Brazil. as all of them are in tail end of production cycle. so they are getting expensive. Gripen is too short range. Brazil is both large land area and sea coasts. It needs fighter with long legs and sensors.

Really twice more? Rafale has done a 10 hrs 40 min mission in Mali and is given for 12 hours (oil limit)….
And certainly S35 can see far away. But we do not know whith which sensibility. And it has the RCS of an AEGIS destroyer…

Rafale only do with tanker support or external tanks. which increase the cost of operations.
Su-35 is built with 21st century material. Rafale is 20 year old. it cannot have smaller rcs than Su-35. once you put weopons the underside of Rafale sticks out much more.

Sorry, Russia needs India’s 5 Billion today to keep the program going. That or it will have to take resources from other places. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be trying to get either of them to join the Program. They would just sell Russian Made PAK-FA directly to either. Which, I am sure they would perfer……….

Russia is not trying to get India into programe. infact Russia is making harder and harder for India to contribute anything to PAK-FA. developments are going full speed ahead without waiting for anyone.

Question: Do you think France would rather build Rafale themselves and sell them directly to India or have India join the program and co-produce the type in India with Indian Suppliers. All the while giving up jobs and technology????

If France can get upfront licensing fees that it may be profitable for France to do co development.

Totally, out of the question………As Russian has a fraction of the Worlds Fighter Market and we seen nothing that even remotely suggest that will change. Let alone on the massive scale of the PAK-FA out selling the F-35. As I said “Ridiculous”.

Russia fighter market is very big as it continue selling larger number of fighter engines and aircrafts. and that includes rejecting $15b Saudi arms deal and not supplying to Iran at this point and not even participating in Korea fighter bid. Russia is too rich for that kind of small money at this point. infact Russia selling fighers at this point is political favor to that country. see Indonesia example.

Does it have a internal LG pod? Or a stealthy pod under development. If so, what will it based on given that the Russian military is importing (license building?) Damocles for the Su-30/34/35.

As far as the weapons mix is concerned, it doesn’t have something like the SDB or SFW (CBU-105) in development AFAIK. Also I’m not sure if it shares the open architecture of the Su-30 family, allowing easy integration of non-source munitions.

5G fighter is too big a project that these pods and weopons are very minor things. so you have to assume they are going to develop almost every thing. otherwise Ktrv cannot increase production increase by 5 fold with current weopons.

Mostly foreign? Civilian population largely uninvolved? I think you’re looking at a different war.

There’s no doubt that there are large numbers of foreign fighters, but there’s also no doubt that many Syrians are & have been fighting the state. Nor is the government side just a professional army. There’s a great deal of fighting being done by pro-government militias, particularly Alawites. The Syrian army at the start of the war was largely conscript: many of the Sunni conscripts have deserted to the opposition. Whole units have gone over. Former conscripts have joined the fight.

I don’t pretend to know the numbers, but I’m damned sure you don’t know that what you say is true. It’s an impression you’ve got, which fits your perceptions, so you accept it. But do you know it? No – you can’t. You don’t have enough information.

US has banned transfer of US made weopons in Arab inventory to Syrian rebels and inability to provide protection incase of attack on Saudi. US is going against its long term allies like Saudi/Turks it shows the levels of threat rebels pose. so your narrative is wrong.

http://stream.wsj.com/story/latest-headlines/SS-2-63399/SS-2-360028/
http://english.alarabiya.net/en/views/news/middle-east/2013/10/26/Saudi-Arabia-s-take-on-the-Syrian-crisis.html