again garry with his traditional stupid comparisons ,no comment , ofcourse mig-31 cant be modified to carry 6 missiles like we see, it just cant so quit wishfull thinking, only new units can be made and they wont be made, so your talk is vapourware like the rest...
Hahahahaha... yeah buddy... the very idea they could fit say six R-37s on the belly of a modified MiG-31 is lunacy.
I mean the fact that they did it with the MiG-31M prototype means nothing...
Vapourware... magic... myth...
heavy interceptor would be very expencive to produce and operate ,much more then pak-fa , and would shrink pak-fa budget to half.
less stealth pak-fa can work as interceptor just fine.
The customer seems to want an upgraded faster MiG-31... which they cannot get from any known or proposed version of the PAK FA.
mig-31 has cruising mach 2.35 and pak -fa will supercruise for much longer at 1,8mach which is good enough.
It is nothing to do with who can fly longer... a MiG-31 could fly at supersonic speed in dry thrust much further than the PAK FA could... the thing is that at mach 2.6 the MiG-31 will get to the target and shoot it down much faster than a PAK FA could and that is the critical point.
Otherwise just buy Il-96s with a huge radar in the nose and 300 R-37Ms mounted along its belly.... much cheaper and much slower and much less effective.
On paper the PAK FA could have replaced the Su-35 and the Su-34 and the MiG-31 but it did not.
The PAK FA is a niche weapon but it will serve with the Su-35 because the Su-35 has lots of advantages over the PAK FA including 14 hardpoints for external store and lower cost. It will also serve with the Su-34 which is also able to carry weapons and equipment on 14 external stores pylons and can carry a larger warload over a greater distance. The MiG-31 is also a much better interceptor though a newer model will be developed to provide even better performance.
The PAK FA is a very good aircraft but it cannot replace the planes I mentioned above and it makes no sense to try to do so... not every mission requires a stealthy fighter.
For many missions like standoff jammer and recon and light strike it would be a very valuable aircraft.
It can replace the recon versions of the MiG and the jammer and recon models of the Fencer, and as a fighter and short to medium range theatre interceptor it will also be very potent along with Su-35s and MiG-35s.
The idea that you can save a little money by having one platform do everything is amusing... do you just carry one pen with you all day, or do you have a pencil and a couple of pens and some sort of electronic device you can write on too.
You can't always borrow what you need when you will need it.
The Aerospace defence forces will want their own aircraft, so they might as well optimise them for the roles they will be using them for. Traditionally the PVO had their own designs... SU-9/11/15/21 and Tu-128 and MiG-25 and MiG-31 but they also had MiG-29s and Su-27s.
Note the AAMs they carried had different ESM equipment and operated with different codes from the Air Force weapons... so they were actually rather more different than they appeared.
They also did a lot of work with datalinks and remote control systems...
Short takeoffs was never an issue... range... and speed were the features they wanted. They will be scanning for targets with small rcs using radar and IRST all the time so stealth has no value... they are not hiding... they are hunting down cruise missiles and stealthy bombers and large bombers with powerful jammers and ESM equipment and of course high speed recon aircraft.
They will also likely have to contend with supersonic bombers of the future so large long range missiles and high flight speed and long range capability would all be critical to their design to catch and shoot down high supersonic targets of all types. The PAK FA is not good enough...