Syria is using MIG-29/Su-24. I am sure Iranian will help Syrian airforce with manpower and maintainance. so that interoperability is important.
I think Russia should sell off all older its Su-24, Su-25 and MIG-29. There is still plenty of money on upgrades and supplying missiles/bombs. these used planes will keep the market depressed for fighters like J-10/JF-17 whose load carrying capacity is not much and not used by many countries.

They can ofcourse carry two more in the inner wing if they dont use drop tank to extend its range.

Practially they would carry one harpoon on centerline , 2x800L Drop Tank on inner wing pylon , 2x BVR Derby Missile on the no 2 pylon or 1 BVR Derby/1 External Jammer and 2 ASRAAM over wing station.

2 Drop tank gives Jag longer persistence/range they usually fly low and fast over the sea.

It is better to have 40 extra Rafale or MKI than wasting billions on 120 Jag. Upgrades are slower process than new built. there is no way any one can justifly the manpower and money spend on maintaining 120 aircraft fleet. flying low means both platform and missile ranges will be less. Su-30 is designed to launched Kh-31 class missile at Mach 1.5. the faster going to battlefield the quicker the return and more sorties per day.

SAP is the def budget and procurement but the percentage of procurement ( capex ) is higher then defence I.e fuel , maintenance, pension etc.

As far as asking 24 trillion goes well MOD can ask any thing for Sap 2020 they asked 35 trillion but got 23, they will have to find a balance to between finance and defence

in about 2 years. Several oil/Gas pipelines/transport projects will be completed to various countries. LNG export will start on larger scale. Russia will be the most dominant food exporter in world.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-05-12/cnpc-to-start-laying-second-china-russia-oil-pipeline-in-june-io48uk3h
CNPC to Start Laying Second China-Russia Oil Pipeline in June

Russia will need to use very overhelming force to achieve reserve currency status and get more extraction/weopons contracts in Middleast/Africa. they will need to accelerate procurement plans of deployable weopons. I don’t see how you can cut procurement and training.

Only one antiship missile. ? They are still in 1980s.

there was an old soviet navy base in yemen, my guess would be that as soon as Aleppo is taken and the border with turkey is controlled russia will re activate their naval base there and keep Saudis out

nvm it is a US base now

they should just reactivate the intelligence outpost in somalia, get somalia to help stabilize Yemen. Security labor would be cheap…

Russia does not want to touch Saudis for now. there are millions of Egyptian and Labanese that become unemployed due to economic collapse in Saudi. Russia can very easily use those and other countries with few billion dollars. than there is upgrading Iranian missile capability. at this point Russian has not entered Middleast full throttle that will collapse the rest of the world economies.

Do you understand what “let say if” mean?

do you even know how to do what if analysis. In early 1980s a Flanker radar could barely search at 100km. 20 year later Irbis trials on Su-30 could do same search at more than 400km with essentially same power supply and that was like 12 years ago performance figures. The ground based radar systems does not have the same limitation in terms of power and size. they can easily be 100 times improvement over early 1980s technology.

It doesn’t need to out range the kinematics range of missiles, it just need to out range the tracking range of radar systems.
And F-22 is not really a multi role asset but aircraft like F-35 can surely carry missiles that out range SAM with else, JSM can reach over 300 nm in hi hi profile, so in the end for both side it really comes down to detect and engage before being detected

F-35 is not in Middleast nor in Eastern EU. and these are the places Russia will really shaft. be practical what assets are there. dealing with cruise missile is work of Pantsir.

SAR, and decoys go both ways, it not like various flying decoys doesn’t exist

how can it goes both ways. there are very limited number of fighters in air at given time. but there millions of targets on the ground. how you going to differentiate without assets on the ground.

https://sputniknews.com/russia/20161008/1046133728/russia-iskander-missile-systems.html
According to Konashenkov, one of the Iskander systems was intentionally exposed to the US reconnaissance satellite flying over in order to clarify the parameters of the spacecraft’s operations.

Ffs, give me a break, let not act like Russia doesn’t have collateral damage. Btw, you said US have low sortie rate? so what country have more sortie than them in Syria?

Russia carried out well over 20,000 sorties. there is very little collateral damage relative to intensity of bombing. that’s why you don’t see that much protest nor any one is going to stop them. all the cannon fodder will be disposed off inside Syria.

The problem was never be can you detect something but can you detect it before it can attack you. Even when RCS stuck , there are various other factors that related/depending to it such as jamming , weapons range would change dramatically overtime. To put it in layman term, let say if before your radar can detect a stealth aircraft from 30 km , now your new radar can detect stealth aircraft from 90 km , does that mean you successfully negate advantage of stealth ? no because may be the stealth fighter now equiped with weapons with much longer range than before or alternatively it may have a jammer that is much more powerful that will negate your new radar ..etc. It never as simple as ah we got a low frequency radar , so stealth is useless.

30 to 90km from where these random numbers coming from? what weopons F-22 carries in Middleast that can outrange SAM missiles?. how can F-22 differentiate between decoys, false emitters from the ground. when US coalition has several times have friendly fires on the ground both in Irak/Syria despite very low sortie rates.
Wars are function of superior intelligence, competence and tactics. Russia has repeatedly displayed all those in Syria. There is no quagmire that Obama predicted based on his faulty intelligence. I have no doubt Russia has very big bargaining and intelligence power over Middleastern/Turkey that will enable it to track F-22 locations and flights. after all technically backward Iran has been collecting those UAVs.