Steve, the title of your thread is still misleading. There is nothing interesting about this photo whatsoever.

According to Jane’s, PAK-FA will fly in 2010 and it will have mach 1.6 supercruise capability with normal T/O weight around 24t.

What do they know.

Incidentally:

MOSCOW, February 11 (RIA Novosti) – The Russian government will order a number of MiG-29 KUB Fulcrum-D carrier-based fighters as part of the state support for the ailing MiG aircraft maker, a deputy prime minister said on Wednesday.

“The state will support in every possible way, including financially, this one of Russia’s largest companies. A draft weapons procurement program envisions the purchase of MiG-29 KUB naval fighters for deployment on future aircraft carriers,” Sergei Ivanov told a meeting of aircraft industry officials in Moscow.

The MiG corporation sustained losses of some 11 billion rubles in 2008, with its debt running at 44.8 billion rubles ($1.25 billion).

Apart from the ongoing financial crisis, the MiG corporation has been hit by Algeria’s decision to tear up a $1.28 billion contract to buy 34 MiG-29s, signed in 2006, over the airplanes’ “inferior quality.” The 15 planes delivered were sent back to Russia.

Ivanov said that Russia’s Defense Ministry would pay 25 billion rubles ($690 million) for 24 MiG fighters produced under the Algerian contract.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said earlier on Wednesday he had signed a resolution allocating 15 billion rubles ($417 million) in federal budget funds to the MiG company to increase charter capital through an issue of additional shares.

“These measures will allow us to integrate the MiG corporation into Russia’s United Aircraft Corporation (UAC) without making the UAC bear the burden of the current MiG debts,” Ivanov said.

The MiG corporation is well-known for its MiG-29 and latest MiG-35 Fulcrum-F fighters.

The MiG-35 is a contender with the Eurofighter Typhoon, F/A-18E/F Super Hornet, Dassault Rafale, JAS 39 Gripen and F-16 Falcon in a tender for more than 126 multirole combat aircraft to be procured by the Indian Air Force in the near future.

You’d think you wouldn’t be able to move in the Gulf of Aden for warships of the world’s navies.

They saw it that way because many of them are completely utterly and hopelessly wrapped up in Obama, others because they don’t want to admit a percieved Russian weakness.

I mean, how would it look if the intended Russian response to US ABM components in Europe was scrapped because of a lack of funding? Sorry Barry, that just ain’t gonna happen. If there was a funding shortage (and recent increases of the defence budget suggest otherwise), they would never drop such a politically vital programme.

I reckon that Jeff is likely to be disappeared by the mods if he carries on like this. I’m not Chinese by any stretch of the imagination and even I’m mildly offended by his comments.

Iran Launches Sattelite

Good for Iran.

Whatever else you may think of the country, you can hardly call it a failed state.

Anyone who tries to paint this as some sort of threat to the US will come off looking very silly in my book.

If they do that, they will end up like Japan. Japan might have had the first operational AESA installed in a fighter and their Kawasaki T-4s surely are nice trainers, but frankly.. who cares? Without exporting weapons there will be no sphere of influence and thus no superpower ambitions.

Japanese might be technologically advanced and economically well off but they still end up like a servant begging for few Raptors and if they are said ‘no’, they humbly and obediently go for the F-35 they don’t really want instead of showing a middle finger. Pathetic if you ask me.. I somehow can’t see China getting satisfied with the same.

I’m not sure exporting fighters = a sphere of influence. I feel like it might be the other way round, i.e. you get a sphere of influence and then you sell your own fighters in it (that’s how it worked during the cold war).

As for China becoming another Japan – that can’t happen until somebody else has control over their natural resources (energy etc.). Even if that does happen – it isn’t impossible – it will have nothing to do with whether or not they export their fighters. It is only once they start having to import their fighters again that we’ll know whether their military industrial complex was successful.