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If you buy a new MiG-29 or Su-27 from Russia, that's not an ex-USSR plane; it's new-build. Ditto buying a new F15-K, as opposed to a 30 year old beater. New pl
by cstross 12y ago
If you buy a new MiG-29 or Su-27 from Russia, that's not an ex-USSR plane; it's new-build. Ditto buying a new F15-K, as opposed to a 30 year old beater.
New planes of these types are not exactly bargain basement items; an F15-K will cost you around $100M, an Su-27 around $32M, an Su-35 about $65M.
The Scorpion, at $20M new, is therefore rather cheaper than an F15 or Su-27, unless you hit the second-hand market ... in which case you have the maintenance issues I alluded to.
(As for Iran's ability to build jet fighters, the Azarakhsh and Saeqeh look to be partial clones of the old Northrop F-5, and may or may not live up to promises; numbers built of each type are in single digits. The Argentinian military aerospace sector makes the Iranian one look like a front-rank power.)
- JVIDEL 12y agoEven then you can upgrade the older Mig-29s. Same with the F-15, even a brand new one shares a lot of technology with the original model from 3 or 4 decades ago. And BTW a brand-new Mig-29K is $30MM, far more bang for your buck than this Scorpion. As for the aerospace industry of those countries again you are missing the point: they would rather invest the billions it would take to buy a decent amount of modern jets in their own companies to grow the local sector than to essentially subsidize foreign conglomerates. Case in point until 1994 Brazil had no domestic-built planes. Now Embraer is an international player in the aerospace industry with exports to many other countries.
- vonmoltke 12y ago> Case in point until 1994 Brazil had no domestic-built planes. Now Embraer is an international player in the aerospace industry with exports to many other countries. Embraer has been building planes for the Brazilian Air Force, both self-designed and licensed-production, since the early 70s.
- JVIDEL 12y agoThey assembled kits and built licensed models with slight modifications, the company didn't take off until it was privatized.
- vonmoltke 12y agoThe company debuted with the EMB 110 Bandeirante in their product line, which was a 100% Embraer design sold both to domestic air carriers and the Brazilian Air Force.
- JVIDEL 12y agoUsing a lot of foreign parts and designed by a French engineer brought over just for this project, all bankrolled by the Brazilian state which the next decade suffered a massive inflationary crisis due in part to these forced industrialization strategies. The reality is before the privatization Embraer was pretty much a nobody in the aerospace industry, unlike now.
- HillRat 12y agoYep, if Iran had an indigenous production capability worth a damn they wouldn't have been desperate to refit all those old Iraqi Su-22s. More generally, if they had the technical capability to run production-scale assembly of their indigenous designs, they probably would have also done a better job keeping their existing airframes mission-capable, rather than have them aging out into spare parts and scrap. Returning to the article, the Scorpion is an interesting example of sophisticated mil-tech becoming a commodity game. A brand-new, $20m multi-role fighter that can be maintained using COTS parts, with a per-hour cost at half of a MiG-21? It's an indication that, in time, any company or state with a reasonable level of sophistication and access to the international tech market could develop, from a purely technical sense, near-peer status to the world's top-line militaries. Iran may be too isolated to make that play, but I could see an Argentina being there within ten years.