Well we agree they need a light aircraft. Mig-35 is just a smaller su-35. I don't consider it as a light aircraft frankly. Single engine and light weight is what makes me consider it a light aircraft. And a light aircraft isn't suppose to do as much as a large aircraft, keep in mind it has less load and smaller legs
You are focussing on the wrong thing... the light plane could be the same weight as the heavy plane... it is not about weight as such, it is about price and cost of ownership.
The light in this case would be better spelled lite... reduced performance over a smaller volume of airspace, but still modern and capable... whether it does that with one engine or two does not matter, because you take the engines out to overhaul them so you have a team per engine, those teams are in the AF so they are not paid per engine, so the costs don't go up, they get a salary so whether they are sitting around doing nothing or working on an aircraft engine doesn't matter.
The important point is that the MiG-35 is a cheaper Su-35 and that is what they need.
That's the deal: do less but what you can do do it cheaper than bigger aircraft.
So you are saying 100 million dollar F-16s or 120 million dollar F-35s would be a good light fighter for Russia because they have single engines?
The size or engine number is not important... the purchase costs and operational costs are what matter because the lite aircraft is a numbers aircraft.
A single engined drone that costs 80 million per airframe, crashes a lot, and needs expensive stealth coatings sprayed on it twice a day whether it flys anywhere or not is a bad solution no matter what its weight is or the number of engines it uses.
We are talking about lite numbers aircraft... a plane that might carry lots of dumb bombs and unguided rockets but use a Gefest & T system to be able to place those weapons on target accurately in free flight, being able to manouver and still release bombs accurately on target... they could be used as bomb trucks... it is the sort of role the US intended for the F-16 as a simple day fighter with a good radar and modern Avionics and then they turned it into a mini F-15 and instead of a 20 million dollar fighter it became a 100 million dollar fighter bomber.
And seeing indians getting ride of their mig-29k which is using all the systems a mig-35 use isn't a good sign for the mig family.
Yes, the Indians are renowned for making sensible decisions when it comes to buying aircraft... they spent more on 36 Rafales than they did on 300 odd Su-30MKIs.
When they get some experience with the carrier based alternatives in the world it will be interesting... F-18 and Rafale... they are going to get a lesson in how much things in the west cost to buy and to operate and they will look back at the MiG-29K with nostalgia.
Russia order it sope for testing but they still lack the AESA.
So?
That is like complaining that UKSK launch tubes for Russian ships are stupid because they wont have hypersonic missiles ready to load into them till next year.
By the time the AESA radars are ready you want to have decent numbers of aircraft in service that can carry them... a repeat of the Su-27... they made huge numbers of airframes but the avionics and radars were not so easy to make so they had airframes sitting doing nothing waiting for radar and equipment to be produced for them.
The MiG-35 have systems and equipment and can be put into service and when AESA radars are ready they can install them then.
Without the aesa it is just the same aircraft with fancier screens as their mig-29SMT that they wabt to replace with sukhois.
MiG-29SMT are older technology with a different airframe.
They didn't change the external shape because the external shape was excellent, but the difference between a MiG-29SMT and the MiG-29M/29K/35 is like the difference between the Mirage 2000 and the Rafale.
Iran is facing a bigger problem than Russia. It is a big country like Russia but it has much mlre enemies on its borders that are very well armed... On every sides. They need a big airforce and they can't use just the su-35 nor do they have money for it. Jf-17 or j-10 is an obligation for them.
I don't agree, I think Iran could probably buy a licence for the MiG-29M and make most of the parts for themselves with Russia sending them engines... if they buy enough they could probably set up an engine overhaul facility that Syria and perhaps Iraq could send their aircraft for upgrades and overhauls...
Russia isn't producing or using that much new air to ground weapons.
An assumption by you. Why do you believe that to be true?
They don't even produce gliding bombs, neither do they produce guidnace kits for dumb bombs.
Guidance kits for dumb bombs are a scam, and who said they don't have glide bombs... but more importantly why do you think glide bombs are so special?
You do understand that to get decent range with a glide bomb it needs to be released at speed and at altitude, which makes it horribly vulnerable to the launch aircraft being shot down by BUK or S-300s operating in the area.
For HATO glide bombs are going to be horrendous because flying high and fast to use them makes you horribly vulnerable to BUK-M3 and S-350 and S-400 and a range of other systems... and even if you release a dozen bombs TOR can easily destroy those in flight as can Pantsir... so it is all for nothing unless you target unprotected civilian targets like the Orcs do, which makes them pretty useless.
China has any of this that they copied from the west. Yeh they are copies and may be of lower quality but if they work I see no problem.
And if they don't work then they are meaningless fluff of no interest.
5 guided 100kg bombs can take out much more than a single unguided 500kg bomb. Russia lacks such weapons.
You have to find 5 targets to use 5 guided bombs and you might not see any on your first pass because the targets you are after will be hiding.
Russia has plenty of different guided bombs from about 20kgs in weight upwards... many of which appear to be intended for use by drones.
A lot of the time western weapons are not so effective because they took their accuracy for granted and reduced to payload weight too far.
What we should be agreeing is that they need a cheaper numbers aircraft that can do most of the things the heavier aircraft can do but over a shorter range with less ordinance, but in much larger numbers.
That is what the MiG-35 is... and they have a fifth gen light fighter model that is single engined and a carrier based light fighter with two engines too... and an unmanned drone that operates as a wingman type drone... the lack of information about them suggests the customer (Russian AF) wants to keep them secret, while the unwanted offer from Sukhoi Su-75 has been revealed to get export customers.
That is what happened to the Mi-28 Havoc when the Army decided they wanted the single seat Ka-50, so the Hokum remained secret and the Havoc was shown to stir up some export interest.
Eventually it was realised that attack helicopters work best at night... harder to shoot down... and a single seat attack helicopter is at a disadvantage flying at night because flying at night is a full time job at low altitude so finding and attacking targets requires an extra crew.
In the end they decided on taking both as they were different enough to both be considered useful...
That might happen with these fighters too of course.
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