Yeah so confident that the weapon has yet to have a successful launch.

The Bulava has been launched successfully. . .

Several failures merely set it back for further tweaking.

I have seen report of SAR version of A-40 Albartoss.

What is the point of a “new turbofan” recon asset?

The Bear is excellent for Russia’s size and needs. Long range, reliable – all it needs is further regular avionic updates in the future. New engines aren’t even that necessary.

You made the original claim. If your opinion of the significance of your own claims (& responding that to their denial is no different in essence from thus responding to the original) is “So what?”, what are you doing here?

How is the US AESA “superior” first of all? This leagues ahead non-sense isn’t going to convince anyone here.

Not even going to talk about the European ones here…

The GELA project was rumored to have been a spin-off development of the Meteorit for the military, even though it was displayed as a technology research vehicle. Beyond that, there’s probably no direct successor to Meteorit as it never entered service, and the Yakhont should be the logical successor to Granit at this point.

I wonder why the Russians aren’t developing something of similar size to the Sandbox / Shipwreck.

Maybe they know they don’t need to ever engage carriers – so smaller missiles make sense? The warhead of the Yakhont is puny compared to the missiles above, so it’s either they know they won’t have to fight the US off, or they intend to field far more Yakhonts per vessel / unit and use smaller size as an offensive / LO advantage.

Well, the French could sell their souls to somehow nab the deal with their Rafales…

My two pesos on the contenders:

Rafale: Certainly doable, considering that the IAF already has some French aircraft in service. But would the French be willing to cooperate?

Typhoon: It’s relative lack of multirole capability as of the now might hurt it like in… singapore, I think it was. Besides, in general it’s pretty similar capability wise to the Su-30MKIs they already have; I’m sure the Indians would prefer something cheaper and more multiroleish, if you get me…

F-16IN: Politics will probably stop this one (Pakistan already owns them). And buying American nowadays is just messy from what I’ve seen.

FA-18E:

Gripen: It can be debated that the Gripen and Tejas are too close in capability and it would become redundant. And it’s small size and payload might hurt it.

Mig-35: Here’s the one I’m voting for. Common architecture with the IN’s Mig-29Ks and it’s already good business relationship in place with Russia speaks good things for this plane’s future. It’s a medium weight and sits right in the balance between the lightweight Tejas and the heavyweight Flanker in IAF service.

The MiG-35 also has the best weapons array, and has AESA over the European counterparts.

LOL. “most badass missile system ever”? I think you must be confusing it with this:

http://www.designation-systems.net/dusrm/app4/slam.html

😉

HAhaahahahahahahah…

182,000KM range with 26 nuclear warheads? 😀

Lovely idea, especially the ending part about the crash of the missile leaving an effective open “dirty” nuclear reactor.

What I’m more interested is what they will cook up with the Yasen boats!