Yep, 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

Yep, 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.