ToddE
Trusted Member
I agree with your SU-35 point. I think best bet for is to go for SU-75 local assembly line with joint assistance. Russia is already courting India to join the project. Spend the next 3-5 years building the infrastructure to be able to assemble the SU-75 locally. Keep the order for 24 Egyptian SU-35’s
Have Russia supply 48 SU-57s and mothball the F-14s for a rainy day. While no country has gotten SU-57 from Russia, Putin has offered it to Turkey in its way to pull Turkey from NATO orbit. Then when Turkey went TFX project route it offered strategic technical assistance.
Thus you will have:
24 SU-35’s
12 Yak-130
75-100 SU-75 (assembly to start by 2030)
48 SU-75
?? Future Iranian fighter jet
?? Kowsar next gen
I know it’s a long long shot.
The problem I am seeing with just throwing major weight into the SU-75 program is that the plane is yet to even fly and we do not know what it will become considering its radically different from the conventional flanker design. Even SU-57 is just a low RCS flanker airframe, it's flying, inducted, and already has combat operational experience.
Leadership is stupid otherwise instead of playing delayed gambles on these 4+ generation fighters from Russia and China, they should just get a few to buy time as a stop-gap and focus on domestic assembled 5th generation now (be it FC-31, SU-57/75) because in few years we will be surrounded by enemies flying F-35, Tempests, stealth wingmen and what not. Iranian missile forces being proven as a strong deterrent have bought Iran some time but for how long? Iran needs to enter the 5th Gen and Loyal Wingmen program. The budget of ~35 Billion USD is more than enough for this considering we dont import any defense product.
Agreed on F-14A conversion to fully armed F-14AM standards (with ALBM capability) and storing some for whenever they are needed to play the role of MIG-31BM. If the Ukraine conflict has taught us anything, its that in the end every airframe counts and you dont throw airframe than can fly to 3500 KM with 6 x LR-BVR missiles. Kowsar in its current form or its future generation, being a light fighter, has no utility in how the Iranian conflict is shaping up other than that the fighter is given to IADS to datalink with Karrars/SAMs and create an inner layer of defense against intrusions by drones, CM etc. Even if it gets AESA+PL15, it has limited utility which is why they should have been done with the program by now, build/rebuild some 70-80 airframes and place them along IADS coverage points. Another crazy idea will be to focus on creating a loyal Wingmen out of Kowsar considering the plane is 100% locally built so can be the guinea pig for this science project.
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