^^
If you are adding the indian navy's mig 29k into the equation, you should know that the People's liberation army navy airforce (I just love typing that out - it is the official name of their naval aviation wing) has around 250+ combat aircraft in its inventory.
The LCA mk2 is not going to begin production in 2015 as you claim in post #6928. We would be lucky to see its first flight by then, or to have mk1 being mass produced by then.
We are NOT getting 25-30 sukhois a year, the number so far has been close to 9 overall, and under present capacities, is 14 per year. It has been reported that the present order will only be fulfilled by 2018 from HAL's side.
We are definitely not getting 5-6 mig 29Ks a year, the number is a lot more sobering, and in any case it doesnt matter, since we are only discussing the IAF.
Before your post, I had showed that with all those things you quoted, adding up all those numbers, we would still be short of China's air combat capable capable fighters by about 500. True, all of those 500 are earlier generation fighters, but we are still talking about a HUGE numerical superiority. 189 cutting edge MRCAs would definitely help bring that gap down, and make sure that the IAF can stand its ground (or is it air?) against the PLAAf, and defend Indian airspace or even have reasonable offensive capabilities. A two front war is still questionable.
20 billion is for 189 MRCAs, not 126. And including weapons, and learning all the technology, and manufacturing them here, and jump starting our nascent aerospace sector, and with 50 percent of the money being spent in India. I feel it is a good investment.
About the crashes, I'm pretty sure you know he wasn't talking about the sukhois, but about the mig 21s.