Unlike its enemies , PAF is has low budget and thus takes long time to save up money to procure new products. After PAF upgrades all thunders to block 3 standards + 76 F-16s (18 block 52) , it will have a great force but not enough to hold off Many mkis and rafales. Now when people talk about SU-35 , They forget that SU-35 if PAF would ever seeked for then it wouldnt make a max fleet of more than 36. Those 36 SU-35 could help much but only until the opponent gets S400 and also super sukhoi upgrades. Super sukhoi upgrades will definitely be to some level on par with SU-35 so again now as quality gap lessens , quantity gap matters and as you know PAF wont be able to afford and MAINTAIN more SU-35s. So in easy words , those SU-35s procurement would go to rubble. Now talking of eft , eft and rafale are are tough competitors of each other and pilot skills matter in their combat . India plans currently to get 36 rafales. EFT purchase for PAF is a big hurdle plus they are expensive and high risk of sanction during war. So this option must be clearly out of mind. Now answer to the stupid rumours that PAF will get SU-35/Eft , look as i mentioned earlier , PAF is low budget , and as india last month again showed their strong interest in T-50 modified version FGFA , tbh this jet would be available to be inducted by 2025 and if PAF gets eft or su35 now than PAF wont have money until at least 2028 to get a 5th gen platform.. This way IAF's big jump towards FGFA could prove disastrous for whole of PAF imaginary fleet of su35/eft and also to F-16s and JF17s. The best answer to Rafale would be J-31 v2 because rafale will give india access to MBDA meteor missile with range more than 200km. So along with J-31 , Paf will get PL-12G , PL-15 and possibly modified PL-21 VLRAAMs believed to be more than 400+km which along with combined advantage of stealth couldale the purchase of s400 and rafale useless for india as J-31 would give PAF superiority overall. Not to forget that rafale itself is very low rcs aircraft so even eft will have hardtime tracking it. And what we believe is that sonce now China is inducting J-20 this month, SU-35 bought by china will be stationed on Gwadar to protect port as it is on lease with china so it is China's sole responsibility to protect it by means which Pakistan cannot such as naval and aerial threats. Land threats can easily be neutralised by Pak army.
40-50 J-31 along by time period of 2025 so rafale will have its opponent ready. After completing the block 3 and possibly block 4 , PAC must start focusing on 5th gen project (own or TFX (single engine config to replace F-16 fleet) ) as stated multiple times by Airchief that PAF will have indigenous 5th gen fighter by 2030 so those indigenous will replace F-16s while J-31 could prove stopgap and counter rafale. As for MIG-29 and other indian jets , Thunders (eachequipped with KLJ-7A), SAMs such has HQ-9 and HQ-16A/B are very much enough and even could prove deadly for mkis since HQ-9 is a modified better version of S300 AND mki IS SUCH A HUGE AIRCRAFT (srry for ignoring the suberb ECM of mki)
Credits :
@MarvellousThunder@PDC
