Our good friend Joe Katzman over at Defense Industry Daily reports that Russia and India are engaged in preliminary negotiations over the development of a next generation fighter. The article quotes India’s Minister of State for Defence Production Shri Rao Inderjit Singh:
“The co-development of a Fifth Generation Fighter Aircraft has been identified as an important area of cooperation between the Indian and Russian governments. Technical discussions to work out the details are in progress. Efforts are on for negotiations and finalization of the draft Inter-Governmental Agreement in this regard.“
I’m reminded of my middle school days in the Netherlands (my dad was the Assistant Naval Attache at the embassy in The Hague) when I used to get into heated discussions with Rohan Paul, my friend from India, about whether the F-4 or the MiG-21 was the better fighter. Perhaps in the near future we’ll be “discussing” whether the F-22 is superior to the MiG 1.44.
– Ward
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
MiG is peddling the 1.44 to India since the Russian AF doesn’t want anything to do with it. Right now, the Sukhoi bureau has a lock on Russian AF procurement and is also the preferred vendor for foreign sales.
This is a win-win scenario for the Russians. Every buck the Indians spend on the project is a buck the Russians don’t have to (and flat-out don’t have). The Indians can never finish an indigenous defense project, so this will drag on forever. Probably nothing will come from this, but it will provide the Russians with someone else’s R&D bucks to look into some clever (and you know the Russians and their mania for cleverness) technologies.