India is not going to throw away 10s of billions of business. India is over reliant on Russia to ditch anything Russian.
International relations do not remain static, Please bear in mind India has always had access to European made defense articles since it became a republic, and thus traditionally used sporadic german, spanish, Italian, british and french made systems alongside russian made ones.
Now Indian relation with russia is more than that of just business, both nations have shared friendly relations, Soviet Union and Russia subsequently have supported India on international forums and militarily supported us in 71 for which we will remain eternally grateful.
As far as over dependence is concerned, let's try to understand that defense systems have longer shelf life than other articles of international trade as we see. Our bisons and your F16's have seen more winters that most members on the forum in their national colors. Republic of India for most part of it's existence has been an extremely poor but a very proud country. We did not have the money to buy the most expensive jets and the shiniest toys in the market, as we couldn't pay with money or compromise our pride, there was no other alternative but to buy what we could afford, which were essentially russian systems. Thus bread and butter of our armed forces have been mig21's, Su30's, pkm rifles, russian arty, and russian ships. We could not afford to let US or UK camp in our airfields thus we could not allow to get top of the line gizmos by signing every treaties that were sent to us.
Russian military philosophy was to overwhelm with numbers in every area it entered, which made their systems cost effective, this was a win win for us, what ever we could manage was put into premium products like german subs, british ships and a/c's in small quantities. So much that we weren't able to source thier top of line products in the past like the mig31's or their missile cruisers.
This changed in late 90's with the surge in Indian economy, but as I said shelf life of defense articles are significantly longer, we couldn't just trash our existing system, and along with that russia had emerged from the dissolution trauma, and was anxious to get back in the defense development market. India saw this as the opportunity to ensure that we have long term symbiotic synergy to ensure that both countries benefit in this equation. Thus development with russia have never taken a back seat, but our premium product buying power has increased, thus we have also expanded our defense trade with western countries purely based on product specific efficacy and projection envelope.
Over dependence on russia in the past was because of lack of options, Current defense development is strategic and well planned one.
Is India really? Russia has lost successive deals to Western bids- AAR (A330 MRTT selected over IL-78MKI), Heavy-lift helo (CH-47F selected over Mi-26 T2), Heavy attack helo (AH-64E selected over Mi-28N), MMRCA (Rafale selected over MiG-35), RSH (AS550 selected over Ka-26). India has shown it CAN and WILL look to others if the conditions are right. The good old days of the Cold War are over, the Russians themselves have been whining that India isn't giving them enough business anymore.
And I am talking about purely defence deals, if we look at the civilian side Russia has more business interests in india than it does in Pakistan- a LOT more.
It's simple business and the Russians understand this all too well, who are they going to want to hitch their wagon to? India or Pakistan? The Russians know which side their bread is buttered. Come on, let's be real.....
India is not going to object to certain deals such as unarmed helos and such but that is about all Pakistan can hope for. If the roles were reversed does anyone really think Pakistan wouldn't be leveraging its position to block certain sales by Russia to its historic rival India?
anyway @
Topic unless Russia is wiling to provide some sort of soft loans to Pakistan, how is the PAF expected to afford 10 of these?
It will be a huge folly for India to look at russia as just another vendor. Russia is an ally and a friend, and there is a stretegic vision to this relations.
Now I dont want to compare numbers but the instances including MMRCA is chum change in contrast to MKI, Shivalik, PMF FGFA, MRTT, Possible Amur, Second Charlie class sub, INS Vik'ya,and various other subsystems and munitions.
