Makes me kinda wish that the Kitty Hawk being offered to India were true. And now India opens its multirole combat aircraft bidding to western companies (Boeing, Lockheed, Dassault, Saab) is quite fitting. If the Kitty sale/transfer were true. then India would be in a position to tell the Russians enough. What would be then next, Hindustan reverse engineering the Flanker? Don’t discount it, it is well within their capabilities.
Chicoms don't know how to lay down a hull larger than a frigate.
yitbos
“What would be then next, Hindustan reverse engineering the Flanker? Don’t discount it, it is well within their capabilities.”
Absolutely not. Current Indian manufacturing technology allows them to domestically build an aircraft perhaps at the level of a Mirage F-1.
In fact it is a challenge for them to license-build less complicated Soviet PGMs out of supplied parts.
As for Flanker it is Chinese who has way better technology than Indians and still struggling to duplicate it’s earlier engines with no success.
Reverse engineering is not working good today as soon as equipment bocome too much more complicated to build.