I would expect the cruise missile ISKANDER to be stealthy and can easily be improved to have a far longer range than publicized. Otherwise a ground attack version of the Yakhont/Brahmos would make more sense.

Deflating a S-300/400 dummy

Really? I don’t know what sort of business you’re in, but the major corporations & government bodies I’ve worked with & for would immediately label you as someone not to employ, & to be wary of doing business with, on the strength of “All it takes is a phone conversation or meeting between officials of both sides”. Varying a contract can be done, & often is – but not casually, by a phone conversation. Long hard negotiations over details, with everyone making damn sure they agree on exactly what each clause means.

Really? Depends on who you are. In every government, corporation and even in medium and small business there are two sorts of people: those who can make things happen and the bureaucrats.

and are you suggesting that Indian officials refuse bribes from Russians, but take them from W. Europeans? What a strange world you live in.

Please read my posts more carefully. I never suggested that.
On the contrary, I am suggesting that the costs and prices quoted earlier in this thread for a new W. European carrier do not include bribes. As for the Gorshkov deal….:p

I fear the Russians aren’t seeing the Big Picture. Billions of dollars worth of deals in the pipeline, yet they’re trying to screw India on one, relatively small, deal. Wouldn’t it make more sense to say “Sorry, we got this a bit wrong. We’ll soak up the loss on this one & compensate you for the delay, to show good faith.”, rather than scaring the Indians with the prospect of similar disasters on those other, some much bigger, deals?

Get real. India got the carrier for $1.

Also, forget the mentality of retail business where the customer is king. These are military/political transactions.

Do you have a source for that? I was aware that the Chinese were consdiering the engine for upgrading their Su-27s but this is the first that I have heard of it being used for a domestic Russian program, especially seeing as the FM2/3 must be making considerable progress by now?

MOSCOW, December 12 (RIA Novosti) – Russia will re-equip a second Air Force regiment in the Far East with modernized Su-27SM Flanker fighters by the fall of 2008, an AF spokesman said Wednesday.

“The first six modernized Su-27 fighters arrived at the Tsentralnaya Urglovaya airfield outside Vladivostok on Wednesday,” Colonel Alexander Drobyshevsky said.

“The regiment [based at Tsentralnaya Urglovaya] will be fully re-equipped with 24 Su-27SM aircraft by the fall of 2008,” he said.

Russia’s 23rd fighter regiment based at Dzemgi, near Komsomolsk-on-Amur, has been already upgraded with 24 Su-27SM fighters.

Experts say the modernized Su-27SM, equipped with two upgraded AL-31FM1 engines and advanced weaponry, is 60% more effective than the Su-27 and estimate current demand for the upgraded version at 200 aircraft.

http://en.rian.ru/russia/20071212/92078523.html

Russian Navy resumes constant presence in world’s oceans

MOSCOW, December 5 (RIA Novosti) – Russia’s Navy has resumed its continual presence in different regions of the world’s oceans, Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov told the president at a meeting in the Kremlin on Wednesday.

“There are plans to dispatch ships to the northeast Atlantic and the Mediterranean Sea from now to February 3, 2008. The expedition is aimed at ensuring a naval presence and establishing conditions for secure Russian navigation,” Serdyukov told Vladimir Putin.

The minister said an aircraft-carrying heavy cruiser, two anti-submarine ships and a tanker left for the Mediterranean on Wednesday, where they will be joined by a Black Sea Fleet missile cruiser and a tanker.

Serdyukov said a total of four warships and seven other vessels of Russia’s Northern, Black Sea and Baltic fleets, as well as 47 planes and 10 helicopters, have been dispatched for the mission. Three exercises, involving the vessels and aircraft, are being planned.

In mid-August, Putin announced the resumption of strategic patrol flights, saying that although the country halted long-distance strategic flights to remote regions in 1992 with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the ensuing economic and political chaos, other nations had continued the practice, compromising Russian national security.

Russia’s strategic bombers have since carried out over 70 patrol flights over the Pacific, Atlantic, and Arctic oceans, as well as the Black Sea, a senior Air Force official said on Tuesday, adding that NATO interceptor aircraft had escorted Russian bombers during almost all their patrols.

http://en.rian.ru/russia/20071205/91056421.html

Some of you are so blinded by Gasprom and gas. It is a two way street. EU buys gas from Russia, in return they sell Mercedes cars, Airbus planes etc. etc. just check the increasing amount of EU exports to Russia…

Those people who talk about lessening EU dependence on Russian gas are exactly those same people who don’t want good political and economic EU-Russia relations.

Guess who will be marginalized if EU-Russia political and economic relations improve steadily?

Guess who must (by gifting, bribing,buying regimes or providing hard nipples with lots of milk behind) install and support anti-Russian regimes in Eastern Europe?

Guess who must create tensions in Europe by installing ABM missiles (and what else at later stages) in some of these East European nations?

I wish Western people from both sides of the Atlantic one day see past their press and propaganda machine (which just as bad as the old Soviet propaganda, but more effective).