As has already been said, CVF building is contracted for, at fixed prices, & unlike the Russians, the suppliers can’t hang on to the ships & demand more money. What is so difficult to understand about that?

The CVF price is not only for the manufacture phase. If you look at the individual contracts signed on July 3rd, you see that they include a lot more. Thales gets £425 mn, for example, which includes all the design & integration work, BAe Insyte gets £275 mn for mission systems, etc. With the manufacturing contracts, that adds up to £3 billion, or £1.5 billion per ship. The £3.8 billion total (£1.9 bn each) includes another £800 million for other equipment (much of it already ordered), dockyard improvements, etc. Everything except the air group, in fact.

Yes, the total price for Vikramaditya includes MiG-29s, but the price excluding them still doesn’t look good for what’s being supplied. Over half the price of a CVF for what is really less than half the ship. If you were designing a carrier from scratch, you wouldn’t produce Vikramaditya. Gorshkov was a hybrid missile cruiser/VTOL carrier, & some of the design decisions were not optimum for a carrier. And then there all the questions already raised, of durability, maintainability & operating cost.

have u seen this. It was period of very low inflation during 90s.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurofighter
[edit] Costs increases
In 1988 the Secretary of State told the UK House of Commons that the European Fighter Aircraft would “be a major project, costing the United Kingdom about £7 billion”.[29] It was soon apparent that a more realistic estimate was £13 billion,[30][31] made up of £3.3 billion development costs[32] plus £30 million per aircraft.[33] By 1997 the estimated cost was £17 billion; by 2003, £20 billion, and the in-service date (2003; defined as the date of delivery of the first aircraft to the RAF) was 54 months late.[34][35] Since 2003 the Ministry of Defence have refused to release updated cost estimates on the grounds of ‘commercial sensitivity’.[36] The UK’s commitment to its 88 Tranche 3 aircraft has been questioned,[37] most recently in January 2008.[38]

So why not say “Rafale, Typhoon, and F-22A”? :diablo:

The interview is in PAK-FA thread. Clearly mentioned that it is Sukhoi consenseus estimate that EF/Rafale are inferior and F-18E is closest competitior certainly not equal like F-22/MIG-31. may be F-18E new radar/range on internal fuel make it close competitor.

Na , check your source , It reached over Mach 2 😉

http://www.flugrevue.de/index.php?id=1347

Anyways back to the point , the Su-35BM promises to be a very very potent multi-role fighter !!

F-15K is not a new plane structurally/aerodynamically.
It is very poor range/performance for fuel weight.

http://www.flugrevue.de/index.php?id=1347
Performance (Flugleistungen)
Max. speed (max. Fluggeschwindigkeit): Mach 2.5
Service ceiling: 50,000 feet (15,000 meters)
Combat ceiling: 35,000 feet (10,500 meters)
Max. combat radius (max. Einsatzradius): over 1800 km unrefuelled
Max. Range (Reichweite): 4445 km
Patrol time (Patrouillenzeit): 3 h, 650 km off base
Structural life (Lebensdauer der Zelle): 8000 h

it is the 5th generation elements in engine, FBW and strucuture that make it superior afcourese Super agility

State-of-the-art Su-35 superior to Western analogs – Sukhoi

MOSCOW. July 2 (Interfax-AVN) – The Su-35 aircraft of the Sukhoi holding is the unrivaled leader among the fighter jets of the world, company’s test-pilot Sergey Bogdan has said.
“Su-35 is superior to all best world fighters, including Mirage, Gripen and Hornet, and is also much better than Su-27 and Su-30 aircraft in Russian Air Force’s inventory,” reads Sukhoi’s press release, quoting the test pilot.
“The aircraft demonstrated superb stability, controllability and agility in midair. Its power plant is simply perfect,” it says, noting that the 20% increase of the fuel load in the internal tanks is yet another advantage that ensured aircraft’s longer range of up to 4,500 km.
“The aircraft is very comfortable, easy to handle and responsive to controls, and has very good thrust-to-weight characteristics,” the test pilot said.
Owing to the thrust vector control, the Su-35 features outstanding flight safety performance. In addition to faster run at runway, its high thrust-to-weight ratio makes it easy for the pilot to both get away from the attack and close with the enemy. The increased range and the airborne radar, capable of detecting and acquiring targets at a much farther distance, are aircraft’s other undoubted advantages.
The Su-35 is a deeply modernized super-agile multirole fighter that falls into the so-called 4++ generation. It incorporated the best technologies and solutions implied in the 5th-generation fighter, thus making it advantageous over other aircraft of the same class. Currently two more experimental Su-35s are being assembled by the Komsomolsk-on-Amur aircraft association, which are expected to join the official trials later this year.

In afterburner or dry? It would be rediculously high if it was in dry setting.

offcourse afterurner.

4 BVR missiles arent even a realistic configuration , atleast 6 missiles i would say .

You can always remove ECM pods and put medium range updated R-73s but the point is Su-35 has more than 3 tons extra fuel. it can always use afterburner to reach required height and speed much quicker and than use non-afterburner performance. which will surely be at much higher Mach numbers than Mach 1.1 achieve at first flight.

Ofcourse the Raptor is inferior , as it cant do 2 and a half hours @ Mach 1.5 like the Eagle .

As for Riccioni is concerned , use the search button on this forum and you’ll have all the points he has made with rebutals , his claims have been dealt with quite well . IF riccioni was to be believed even a vanilla F-16A/B would be better then the SU-35 .

let do simple math.
F-22 20 ton weight + 8.2 tons fuel+ 4 AAM= 29 tons
F-15C 14tons with CFT+8.2tons fuel+4 AAM(4AAM almost semirecessed)= 23 tons
So even if F-15C has 17000lbs non afterburning thurst and F-22 has 22,000 at most. performance/range will be pretty close. It would be interesting to see at what height F-22 can achieve Mach 1.5 and how much fuel is consumed before that.
Su-35 is different beast. It is first aircraft with serious weight reduction, reduce x-section, 20% increase fuel capacity of already very large capacity and increase thrust engine. It went supersonic in first flight in non-afterburning mode.

Flanker antenna is same concept as Ka-31. Flanker can basically lift antenna the size of Erieye/Hawkeye under fuselage. Put external fuel tanks like Su-35/Su-34 underwing. u will get essentially similar endurance like Hawkeye.

The Russian Communications specialist Polyot unveiled some of the new capabilities, driving the evolving command and control infrastructure supporting modern Russian fighters, used domestically and for export. Polyot claims that aircraft supported by their encrypted, jam resistant datalinks can achieve up to 25% increase in combat effectiveness, by establishing autonomous fighter groups and reducing pilot workload. The systems support high speed data networks and use universal interfaces for integration, linking the aircraft avionics and ground based communications

Well if the RuAF says it, it must be true then, right??:rolleyes:

So do u think IAF/RMAF knows more about avionics. It is Ruaf that is managing complex programs like PAK-FA/Su-34/Su-35/MIG-31/Tu-160.
The level of complextity is very different level.
http://www.cnews.ru there is whole 6 page description about avionics in science or technology section.

If the RuAF were still operating the MiG-21 as a front line AD fighter (and they haven’t done so for over 35 years), I have no doubt that they would indeed have carried out the same upgrade as the IAF Bison, Kopyo/R-77/R-73 etc…

Nope. They will not spend money on avionics alone to a new fighter level on 35 year old airframe they will try to find another way of achieving the same ability like building more robust datalink system for guiding BVR missiles from MIG-21.