New Delhi is increasingly concerned about the sluggish progress in the fifth generation fighter aircraft (FGFA) project, a joint endeavour between India and Russia.
Driving India's worries is the fact that the Russians are neither explaining why a prototype aircraft caught fire during a technology demonstration earlier this year nor addressing other technical doubts expressed by India. In fact, the defence ministry is quite sceptical about reports from Russia that a final design contract for the next generation combat jet is on the cards.
New Delhi is particularly miffed with the fact that despite being an equal partner in the FGFA project in terms of financial contribution, Moscow is not keen to share technical details about its next generation stealth fighter PAK-FA, on which the Indian version of the combat jet will be based.
The Indian version, called the Prospective Multi-Role Fighter (PMF), is almost exactly the same as PAK-FA but with some variations. In fact, Indian money is key to keeping Russia's PAKFA programme alive. Russia has built six prototypes of PAK-FA and, after repeated requests from India, it agreed to hold a demonstration flight earlier this year for technical evaluation. The flight ended in a fire that embarrassed the Russians.
link.
heh. Sounds a great way to cripple Russia by convincing the Indians to buy F-35s instead. They might be able to order as many as 100 F-35s for what they are going to pay the Russians for the T-50s/PAK-FAs/PMF. That's assuming the cost of the PAK-FA doesn't grow, but then again the Russians NEVER jack the price up after you've bought into one of their programs. uh uh no.
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