Either buy them, or get Tech transfer and major assistance (unlikely).
The Russians have not treated us well in the past, and despite this we helped them militarily when the whole western world went against them. I suppose it took them a while to get their head out of the sand and understand the western countries have plans for Russia and they are not good plans, and the Israels will never be neutral. If they had to choose they will always choose USA over Russia.
Took them 2 decades to realize that. Took them the Ukraine war to understand that. But here we are now, and Russians have been very good to us since this war started. They never even condemned Hamas for their attack on Oct. 7th which was crazy and unexpected to me. Cooperation is expanding, ideally I'd like to see most of the focus on some sort of joint-aircraft program.
We once had a Joint-fighter program under development in the early 2000s, if not sabotaged by Israel and the USA who provided incentives to Russia to betray Iran, we'd already would've had a great trainer aircraft by the early 2000s. Instead only a few years ago we unveiled an indigenous trainer. What a shame about the time wasted...
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