Now you have a plane of which 4500 copies have been sold and it starts falling down against the Mig Bison/29s. How do you think people will perceive the 16s.
Why will the kill switches work only during combat? Kill switches will be used to prevent the aircraft from taking off. In case there is an aircraft in the air, the kill switch will activate after landing. There is no negative publicity in that. Don't forget that this is a country that destroyed an airliner in order to send a message to the Iranians.
And who knows, Pak leaders may already have been aware of it since the day of purchase. The Americans may have already explained its purpose and the conditions for its use. We know for a fact that the F-35 does now, and countries are lining up, even the Middle East has evinced a lot of interest.
If you look at the Arab market, Saudi Arabia has just bought Typhoons because of US reluctance to supply them with BVR AAMs although they have also bought 15s.
That's the thing. The Middle East will buy American jets even without BVR. But they will never in their right mind buy a European or Russian jet without BVR.
UAE inspite of having patents on the AESA radar and having fairly capable bl. 60s armed to the hilt has dwindled between ordering more or ordering Rafale. Kuwait and Egypt has ordered Rafale.
UAE and Qatar are replacing their existing M-2000s. Egypt bought the Rafale because they wanted a jet that was competitive with the Israeli F-35. That's why they bought it in a hurry too. The Egyptians have probably purchased 3 squadrons of the Mig-29 as well.
The Japanese have built their own plane and South Korea is diversifying and building their own. Turkey is moving away inspite of having the source codes for 16s. So traditional markets forcthe US are no more traditional and things are pretty labile.
The Koreans are diversifying in areas where the US does not compete in. And the Japanese are diversifying because the F-22 was rejected for export and they have the need to replace their F-15s.
Now look at Indo US nexus. The US has no love for India or for that matter Pakistan. They are init for money. They want to use India to contain China plys India has the biggest market in the so called democratic free world.The US wants to tap into it. However it will never allow India to get too far ahead and wants to keep Pakistan just happy enough to keep wanting more US products.
Of all the countries that have seen confrontation
A
India is not dependent on the US for core technologies. All of that's coming from Russia and pretty soon France.
In fact what India has bought from the US are technologies that are not available elsewhere. The Russians don't have a C-17, C-130, Chinook or P-8 equivalent yet. Similarly India is purchasing drones, carrier aewc and carrier tech from the US because even the Europeans don't have equivalents. The only exception was the Apache which won the tender fair and square, meaning it could have lost too.
Basically, if the Russians don't have it, the Europeans don't have it, India buys American. So the "get too far ahead" situation doesn't affect India. In fact, in about 6 months you will know how far India has really come when it comes to core technologies.