Cultural influence i guess.
We only have their simple translations. These names may sound real good in chinese???

Shafaq is said to make its first flight in 2008, while enter service around 2011/12. A long time to go yet.

More like “service life” which is the term Russians use. This is not airframe life I warn you, as many people get confused with the term. Service life would be MTBO or Mean Time Before Overhauls in the West.

Actual airframe life should be a few times of the service life. It should be 2000 hours, not 1000 hours btw, as I remember the SU-30MKK was rated 2000 hours service life, so I may assume that’s the standard for modern Flankers.

I agree with that.
Though i still find it somewhat confusing whether the ‘internal source’ who leaked out the story about engine nicks in SU-30Ks referred to MBTO for engine (also 1000 hours) or airframe itself.

So 700+300=1000 hours is the airframe life of the Su-30K, is it?

Well dats wot the paper says…though i used to think its engine life???

Those who have read draft copies of the report say the Su-30MKs and F-15 pilots were seeing each other at the same time with their radars, but the Indian pilots were getting off the simulated first shot with their AA-10 Alamo missiles and often winning the long-range engagements. The Indian pilots also had more flight time in the previous year than the U.S. pilots, roughly 300 hr. compared with 250 hr., the pilot said.

Now this number of flight hours came to me as a massive surprise.
Assuming a minimum 2:1 pilot to aircraft ratios, it implies that MKs did 600 during the previous year. But then according to The Hindu (Sep 06, 2003)…Each Sukhoi-30K plane has flown an average of 700 hours and only 300 hours of airframe life is left and dat The first batch of 18 is of Sukhoi-30K make (NATO name `Flanker’) and arrived in 1997-98.. So if these aircrafts did 600 hours during the previous year (2002/2003), does this mean they only accumulated 100 hours/aircraft during previous years???

However, there r couple of alternative explanations.
1. MK pilots made up their hours on other aircrafts?
2. Some MK pilots (dat were involved in these excercises) get more than average hours, while other get less than average hours on these machines???

I have to admit that whenever i have read about these excercises, F-22 has always come to mind 😉 If flanker is really as lethal as it is made out to be then i wonder how many JSF/F-22 Taiwan needs :rolleyes: and one has to wonder when would Iran get any??? :confused:

I am still interested in knowing how much Mig-29M costs to maintain and run compared to the M2K that is being offered to India. If Mig-29M is something like at most 30% more to run & maintain then I’d get the M2K

Rather difficult to say but i guess one can make an educated guess based on some facts.

1. I think most here would agree that western fighters in general are more user friendly, i.e. less maintenance required, higher MBTO, airframe/engine lives, better fuel economy etc., in comparison with their russian counterparts.

2. In a recent AFM article about Israeli F-15s, i remember reading that it costs IDF/AF around $15,000 per flight hour for F-15, more than 50% of which goes onto the fuel.

3. One can assume that overall maintenance costs in India will be considerably cheaper than Israel (or west) especially if the spare parts r produced locally, but the true extent of overall advantage is likely to be reduced by more extensive maintenance requirements.

4. M2K-5’s normal take off weight at around 10,000 Kg (with one engine) is considerably lower than that of Mig-29M at around 17,500 kg (with two engines).

Taking all these factors into consideration, my own guess is that m2K-5 will b considerably cheaper to run than Mig-29M…probably by as much as 50%.