So in terms of contracts MAKS has been a bust right?

5 Tor-M2’s to Belarus
4 Yaks-130 to Belarus
A mere LOI for Ka-52’s from Egypt. No firm order
32 SSJ’s to a state run leasor with only 18 of them leased to Red Wings and the rest likely to never be built.
15 SSJ’s to SCAT of Kazkahstan which just means SCAT is taking the SSJ’s that Bek ISNT taking.
An order for 25 SSJ’s from Yamal but no way in hell does Yamal need 25 SSJ’s. That will never turn into more than a handful of jets if any.
A wet lease for 1 SSJ to a no-name Cambodian operator with an option for 2 more.

Zero transport helicopter sales announced.

Even the Su-35 buy for the VVS is postponed.

In terms of business this is the worst MAKS since the Soviet collapse frankly.

Only bright spot is that at least Boeing and Airbus arent taking home any business either.

The Irbis has that low speed scan mode where it should be able to both track and lock the F-35 (assuming .1m^2 RCS and not absurd .01m^2 figures that exist only in fantasy land) at 90km’s absent jamming. That’s still BVR range. There are videos on youtube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cieLN4_tn0A

90km is BVR range. 105km range on AIM-120C5 gives the F-35 really a 15km edge in missile exchange. That’s a lot but does it really translate to 4 to 1 advantage?

I dont put much stock in fact that F-35 will see the Su-35 at 300 clicks since that just gives it choice of committing to engagement or running away. It cant take a shot at 300 clicks so what difference does it make for air to air fight? Running away of course is smartest thing to do — better to kill the other guy when he is parked on the ground than have to get into fight in the sky.

When the 120D comes into service and you can take shots from 180 clicks out this will change things, but the Russkies should have an Irbis replacement by then with ability to hunt F-35’s from farther out. Irbis is 10 year old tech at this point.

There’s no more and no less state involvement than in Europe. Americans cant understand it but Thales, Airbus, Finmeccanica etc… are not all that different in structure than Rostec, UAC, etc…except that where as most of the Euro defense firrms are directly state owned on the order of 25-33% with another 20-30% in the hand of state pension fund (making them defacto majority state owned) in Russia you dont have the illusion of pension funds masking the true scale of state ownership. Instead in Russia you have different fiefs belonging to different bosses so you have Rostec and Rosnano both having stakes in the same company even though both are themselves state entities. Russian firms are inefficient owed to political decision to employ large #’s of managers and do-nothings to keep the social pressures under control. You see that in Europe too, but to less of a degree. So the nature of the beast is the same but the political realities the beast operates in are a little different though less so every year. Rostec for its part is actively cutting the size of the manager cadre to “European levels” right now, but by US standards the Euro players and the Russian players are both massively bloated at the top especially and thus poorly run though there’s plenty of make work position creation going on in the US too.

Best run defense firms are probably Israeli owed to high salaries relative to crappy budgets keeping the make work to a minimum out of necessity as an Israeli engineer is probably the most in demand engineer there is today while in the US the REAL level of unemployment among engineers is actually pretty bad.

They eat the Russian Navy rats, obviously. I could use one or two myself right now as my apartment is infested with New York City rats and American cats are too fat to actually chase rats….

http://bmpd.livejournal.com/1126592.html

This says they will be new build aircraft and not refitted old airframes. Better late than never but this should have happened 20 year ago!

Willing to bet money that if this 20386 thing materializes it will just be a 20385 with a new radar to replace the less than impressive Furke and no other major changes. Nothing else on the type needs replacing.

I still don’t actually buy that T-50 will enter service with RuAF in 2016. Why rush to field a system that isn’t ready when Su-30, Su-35, Su-34, and MiG-35 are already in or nearing production?

In service doesnt really mean “in service” in Russia. Basically as soon as a jet is in VVS hands for state trials they call it “in service” that does not mean it is operationally ready. The Su-34 and its 18 initial prototypes was “in service” a decade before series built units hit line units. The 2016 date basically means that when they expect a version decent enough to kill something other than its pilot to enter state trials. Those trials can then take 5+ years before line units get birds.