Dont feel many nations why buy a jet, that is not even used by China, the biggest contributor to the plane.
Wow!!cool point....but there is currently a nation having a defense project which its own AF accepted to save the face of some "indigenous development"...although having assistance from 4 aviation giants (for some avionics,engine,weapons etc)
But lets not go there...
although we just did..LOL!
As far as
why China doesn't use the JFT
well that alone can bring out a whole debate like if they didn't want to use it themselves than why did they:-
-Create their own pt-06 version
-use WS-13
-Integrated (and still integrating) the best weapons they have
-Went through the trouble of designing and financing a whole project which had 3 different phases (Sabre 2,super 7 and then the FC-1/JFT) and was at one time termed "the paper project"....
However getting back on topic
Simple reasons...
-Not every nation can afford F-16C,Mig-29 SMT,Mirage 2000-5 league jets ... but all the countries need some sort of self defense...
-Simply put the main capabilities like BVR,EW etc are provided in the same league but with less price...
Simple rule which we management science nerds call the demand rule which basically states:-
"Less price, more the demand of a given good"
than there is the
necessity vs Luxuries...
Necessity being some credible air defense
Luxury being having higher end 4/4.5 gens at their given price which many countries cant afford.
As for the time frame its simple infact it actually hints that by 2017-2018 time frame we would be having (or atleast aiming of having) a JF-17 fleet strength of 150+...
Regards...
ABJAN