And don't forget China built a carrier with much less time it took Russia to build a frigate. Admit it, Russians are slow even if Russia has 10% the population of China.
China has decided it has a need right now for aircraft carriers, that means nothing to Russia... why would it care about that?
If China becomes belligerent and Russian needs to deal with them it would use Zircon and Kinzhal missiles and Kh-32s to eliminate Chinese ships... carriers would not be needed and would in fact be a liability.
How many ICBMs does China have?
Russia does not need to match anyone in terms of production... food production is vastly more important to Russia that production of military equipment... I would say Russia has reached a conventional power level where on one would want to fight them by choice... which is all they really need.
Anything more is just pissing money away to the MIC.
One possible reason for low acceptance of the Su 57 is that Russian Air Force is not satisfied with its capabilities, especially its stealth capabilities.
Another possible reason is that they came up with 76 paint schemes and really could not decide so they are making 76 so they can test out all the different alternative paint schemes because that is the only way to be sure.
Rather more seriously they are developing anti stealth technology and their new photonic radars might render stealth useless... so why blow the budget making thousands because the US says it is going to make thousands.
You have to ask yourself regarding the F-35 and its proposed 3,500 aircraft production run... they were going to make hundreds of B-2s to replace all the B-1Bs and the B-52s but they cost too much to buy and to operate so they currently have about 19. The F-22 was going to replace all the F-15s they were going to make 1,500 of them... then it was cut to 750, and then just under 200 is what they actually made... because it was expensive and not 100% functional... it had problems too but they were kept secret better than the F-35s problems...
Now we have F-35 in production even though it is no where near operational status... the Israelis should be destroying Russian air defence systems in Syrian use with ease... flying in to Syria and releasing lots of guided sophisticated weapons to take them all out without even being seen let alone tracked... how is that going?
What Israel is going in Syria it could do with F-16s and F-15s for a fraction of the price an F-35 doesn't do it for... but both the F-16 and F-15 have better range and more weapons and heavier weapons load capacities with better dogfight performance at a tiny fraction of the cost of an F-35...
With this sort of evidence you are whining that the Russians haven't ordered 10,000 Su-57s and ten CVNs... dude that is probably why the Americans keep harping on about 3,500 F-35s because they want Russia to produce a lot of expensive planes that need expensive maintenance for a very limited niche role in any combat scenario... looks to me like the only one that fell in to the trap of over spending was NATO.... which is hilarious... Trump will find his NATO allies will be spending 4% of their GDP on defence just to keep their F-35s flying, but the terrible business model used to build the F-35 means it is expensive because it is inefficient so the profit margin is actually not that big... what with all the fixes and patches and rebuilds that will be needed I suspect they wont be making very much profit on these planes... especially when numbers are cut to 1,500 and then maybe 500... and the damn things still are not any use over older models.
Furthermore, China will probably purchase the Su 57 only 4-5 years from now and India will purchase once they start phasing out their old Su 30s. So that's 10 years down the line. Other countries like Algeria, Egypt, Indonesia might purchase too but in smaller numbers. Therefore, less export means cost per unit remains high.
Russia has paid for development... they don't need India to buy them to complete the aircraft, and I suspect China will want to buy the export version as soon as it can because its technology is aging... buy it now and they learn now... wait 5 years and the export model might still be the one offered today but either way the Russian one will be rather different inside anyway. Hell the Chinese might open up a joint venture... a Su-57MKK where they want better stealth for use against Japan and South Korea and the US... if they pay for it I am sure the Russians will worth with them on it... anything they develop and learn can be applied to their Su-57M where appropriate.
To be clear they could have made the Su-57 $200 million dollars per aircraft and made it much more stealthy than any US aircraft, but it would be much less capable in other areas and very expensive to operate, so they made the design choice to have less emphasis on stealth and more emphasis on manouver performance and armament etc etc... and affordability... meaning their customers could operate much larger fleets of these aircraft to make them more effective against NATO or the US than if they could only afford a few.
On the contrary RuAF are ordering more Su 35.
Wrong... the Russians have never said they will go to an all stealth fighter fleet... that is the Americans who stealthified (ie made much more expensive and less capable) their F-18 subpar whore net, and destroyed all tooling to make previous generation aircraft easily and cheaply and decided to concentrate on an all F-22 fleet and when that became obviously too expensive they went to an all F-35 fleet which is even more expensive... wonder how that is going to turn out for them... anyone want to guess how long it will take to reopen F-16 or F-15 production factories?
Russia doesn't have that problem they are producing MiG-35s and Su-35s and Su-34s and Su-30s... keeping in mind that the MiG-35 is both land based and carrier capable, why not make a few stealth fighters and stealth drones to operate with them... that effectively doubles their performance and effective numbers... especially when considering they might allocate half a dozen S-70 drones per Su-57... they are basically autonomous and act like wingmen...
If the Su-57 isnt ready for massproduction I gess the Su-35 is the next best thing to continue ordering.
For many roles the Su-57 is total overkill, the Su-35 is the ideal choice for a range of roles and missions, and the MiG-35 is also a specific tool for specific jobs... where stealth is irrelevant a MiG-35 would be a much cheaper option than any bigger aircraft...
Having a mix of all three actually makes it much more flexible...
They also make conventional submarines SSGs and SSKs, for many of the same reasons... sometimes smaller cheaper options make more sense and add volume to the available numbers without blowing the budget... Russia can't just print more money like the US can.
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