The US buying military related stuff from Russian doesn’t sound like a great idea.
Crony Capitalism!
Well about 20 years ago Pratt & Whitney spent a lot of money trying to copy the Russian engine design for the RD-180.
They finally gave up.
So....here we are...
“he US buying military related stuff from Russian doesn’t sound like a great idea.”
How many integrated circuits and chips in weapons systems are sourced from China?
There are national defense consequences for pursuing free trade policies that result in the decline of the nation’s industrial infrastructure and manufacturing capabilities. These are choices our politicians made for us.
And the benefits of globalization and free trade are?
“The US buying military related stuff from Russian doesn’t sound like a great idea.”
Looks like Putin has already done more for our security than Obama, despite Obama’s best efforts. Lol
It did for about five minutes, 10-12 years ago, when we were looking at withdrawal of the F-14 from service (thanks to Big Dick Cheney and "41") with no replacement anywhere close to its performance in sight. (Still the situation, we're just forging ahead without a solution.)
At that time, someone put forward the idea in forums like this one of buying and licensing Su-33 airframes from Sukhoi, and then engining and equipping them like F-14's over here. That was the idea. Su-33's are rangy like the F-14D "Bombcat" and they're capable of carrying a big missile like the AIM-54B/C Phoenix. (The Su-33 can carry the big R-33/33E "Amos" "AWACS-killer" LRAAM and so would presumably be capable of carrying AIM-54 and AIM-120 "Slammers" and the Pegasus ASAT/ABM weapon.)
Competing and better ideas were dragging out the F-14 followon blueprints Grumman had in a drawer somewhere (there were three versions, hot, medium-hot, and super-incandescently hot).
We're trying to get by with the much-shorter-range, Phoenix-less F/A-18 E/F "Superbug". Which is bad news, since we're going to have trouble protecting the carriers, the Fleet, and our MEU's ashore with the aircraft and carrier shortage we've been hobbling along with since 2005. We just haven't yet had our butts exposed by a major conflict so far -- we've been lucky.
Bugs and Slammers is a virtuous combination, don't get me wrong, but they haven't anything like the range, payload, and combat virtuosity that the F-14's loaded up with Phoenix missiles did. It looks like our luck is running out now, as China and Russia muscle up to take us on, and even the Iranians want a piece of us.