Chestnut
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Sorry, but you will be hard pressed to find a lot of people on this section that would support buying Russian. It's been talked and debated time and time again and it all comes down to the same conclusion.This is what bothers me. How come they managed to buy SU-35 (24 of them!) after all that. After Rafale/SCALP fiasco they still didn't bother to purchase U.S. jets.
Maybe we should do the same
Just proceed with the old $1.1b deal to get 11 SU-35, and convert the budget for 32 F-16V (was it $4.5b?) to get SU-35 instead. We go full Russian
Now this is interesting, Russian news agency TASS said that the Russians started producing SU-35s for Egypt in May 2020. Now the first 5 of them arrived already in August 2020. If this news is valid, then the production line for SU-35 is probably rather empty now. If we want to switch TNI-AU to be totally independent of U.S. made jets/missiles/parts then maybe this is the right time.
CAATSA (hopefully) won't last forever and looking at the current geopolitical climate, we might probably see a future where the U.S. will have less and less close allies in Europe. Maybe go full Russian would be much better for us (TNI-AU) than all the other alternatives.
The TNI AU should not be buying Russian Jets, or any Russian equipment for that matter because:
(i) We are not Vietnam, our infrastructure is geared towards US jets.
(ii) Russian aircraft is now considered somewhat inferior to their Chinese counterparts as a result of Chinese reverse engineering and evaluations from Russian equipment that they bought.
(iii) The quality of Russian aftersale support is piss poor, and it was designed that way as a business strategy. They will not want to set up an MRO unless you pay even more money (think twice-thrice the amount needed for buying the initial jets) and even then, the levels of services is still limited. Don't believe me? Ask the Malaysians.
(iv) As a result of those aforementioned reasons, the costs and liability of transitioning to an all-Russian equipped Air Force is too high and would take far too long to reach IOC/FOC.
(v) The end-user themselves (the TNI-AU) does not want Russian fighters. The push for Russian and non-American fighters comes from interest parties within the parliament and MenHan, not from the TNI-AU.