Why do you feel India will buy the F35? I kind of want them to, to just get it over with after all the Pak Fa issues, but I have not seen much indication they will, apart from the US expressing enthusiasm at opening up sales to India.

“Hindus don’t”? That’s a pretty broad stroke there my friend. India has had an enormous movement into the middle and upper classes, even if it doesn’t quite match China, so you being wrong is pretty self evident. Yes, there are some hindus that stick to the caste system, and that sucks, but those types are dwindling,…

Yeah, I think it’s mainly to scare Russia. A few F35s is a big force multiplier against Russia in the north. Rafale vs Su-35 or Pak Fa, we may come out on top, but not by so many. F35 vs either of them, huge force multiplier.

I believe the issue there was the weapons to be attached to it? In my understanding we use a lot of NATO/American weapon systems that would be incompatible with the Rafale, and so in the long term switching over would be more costly. That on top of the F35 being competitively priced (yep) with the Rafale in the first…

Source? Article or comment?
India wasn’t going to buy the Pak Fa directly by the way, theirs was going to be a variant on it called the FGFA with stealth and engine and various other improvements.

I’m curious what the low number of Russian Pak Fa purchases is doing for the Indian-Russian collaboration on that project...Either partner buying less means ballooning individual unit costs for the other. Russia showing less than absolute confidence in it probably isn’t being taken as a good sign. Plus, Russia sold…

With a peer state conflict, what jet could foil the stealth and radar of the F35? The current contenders being the J20, J31, and Pak Fa/FGFA. But China is quite behind on avionics, RAM coatings, and engines, and the Russian Pak fa is widely reported to have an underwhelmingly high radar cross section. Neither, it…

Nothing is fool proof, of course, but say it rocks a 4:1 BVR to one slipping by to visual range combat ratio, it’s still a considerable force multiplier. I’m no expert, but the J20, J31, and Pak Fa don’t even seem like they’d possibly come close to forcing closer to a 1:1 BVR to VWR ratio.

It costs about as much, it’s lifetime costs are likely higher once the F35 hits full production. F35 has the most advanced radar and a much lower radar cross section return. If you disabled all those benefits and made them fight within visual range? Sure, the SE may win. But that’s not a realistic fight. The f35 would…

In what way? It costs about as much, it’s lifetime costs are likely higher once the F35 hits full production. F35 has the most advanced radar and a much lower radar cross section return. If you disabled all those benefits and made them fight within visual range? Sure, the SE may win. But that’s not a realistic fight.…

A BVR missile, of course. Since this is the 21st century and all.

And the most advanced russian engines, that will go in the finalized Pak Fa, won’t be sold to China I believe, after China tried to copy their engines before. They’re selling China fourth gen fighter worthy engines at best.

Disagree. Any amount of manoverability in a plane isn’t as good as what’s in modern missiles; the better bet is to stay out of radar sight than to try to out-fly a missile.

Yeah, and they still haven’t demonstrated advanced radar absorbing material either, their avionics are also still far behind...The J20 and J31 won’t pose a threat to the F35 for a long, long time, if ever. By the time China has them up to where they want them, the US would be at the tail end of the F35s life. The…

The cost is similar to an F35, is why. The F35 cost is still expected to shrink in full production, meaning lower repair costs as well. The SE is pretty sweet, but it’s buying the plane of today for the price of the plane of tomorrow.

Any ballpark of the RCS (radar cross section) of these puppies with the stealth upgrades?

I can barely finish 8 hour campaigns within a month, lol

Some things are crazy to think about, like how we went from the Wright Brothers to the F22 in about a century. A blink in our existence, really, yet technological growth became exponential.

What makes you think a new game 7 years later on a completely different generation of hardware will have the same bug?

“Operators do not have to only drop PGM’s at a minimum of $20k per bomb kit, they can use the GAU-8 Avenger cannon for persistent precision target destruction on the cheap.”