I agree with your post. But to be frank, what the Russians were very successful at, was to milk my Indian friends cash out of them very successfully when the R&D was worth like a few million. Like I said, this isn't a new platform and didn't require F-22 or F-35 type of R&D. This is LM stealth optimizing the F-16 or Boeing coming up with F-15's stealthy version. There is hardly any real R&D involved but yet our Indian friends paid billions into it
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If I was in Indian leadership, I'd have started a new project internally with US's support (like the DRDO's AWACS, etc, project with US, Israeli support). And I would've bought like 40-60 F-35's to soften the deal where the US defense companies would be willing to give India partial technology which can then be used in an internal stealthy project. But instead, they decided to waste their money by giving it to the Russians