Indian state-owned aerospace company Hindustan Aeronautics Limited has been reported by local media outlets to have begun talks with Russia on the possible joint production of Su-30 fighter aircraft in India for export. This development has the potential to be a game changer for the fighter export profiles of both countries, as Russia has struggled to sustain fighter exports as clients are threatened with Western economic sanctions, while India has failed to gain significant foreign interest for its troubled and much delayed Tejas lightweight fighter.
With a long list of potential clients for a jointly produced Su-30 fighter, the implications of such an agreement for both countries remain highly significant.
The Indian Defense Ministry placed its first order for the Su-30MKI fighters in 1998, ordering 10 fighters that year before placing follow-up orders for 140 fighters in 2000, another 40 in 2007, and 42 more in 2012. Continuing orders have brought the fleet size up to over 260 fighters today, which form the backbone of the Indian Air Force’s combat fleet and make up 12 of its 24 fighter squadrons. The latest order was reported in June 2020, bringing total orders up to 284 fighters, with incremental upgrades since the first deliveries in 2002 having improved performance considerably.
India has assembled Soviet and Russian fighter aircraft under license for decades, with such deals having been far from uncommon ranging from North Korean MiG-29 assembly to Chinese Su-27 production in the 1990s. That said, India’s relationship with the Su-30 program has long been exceptional. Outstanding factors include not only the scale of Indian orders, which are close to double those placed by the Russian Defense Ministry itself, but also the extent to which the aircraft’s design was shaped by Indian requirements.
The Soviet Armed Forces in 1984 introduced the Su-27 Flanker air superiority fighter into service – an aircraft that, after being extensively tested in the United States in the 1990s, came to be considered the world’s most capable in terms of its air-to-air performance. A longer ranged derivative of the aircraft designed as a twin-seat interceptor began development in the mid-1980s and first flew in 1989. The USSR’s disintegration in 1991 prevented it from entering service domestically, and it was only Indian and Chinese orders for customized models that allowed the class to enter serial production under the new designation “Su-30.”
The Indian variant integrated technologies from the canceled Su-27M and Su-37 air superiority fighters, including the use of the Su-37’s N011M radar as well as the Su-27M’s controlled canards, AL-31FP engines, and axisymmetric thrust vectoring nozzles. When it entered service in the Indian Air Force in 2002, the Su-30MKI was widely considered the most capable fighter in the world, and was much more sophisticated than any fighter which Russia could afford for its own air force. Notable achievements included being the first operational fighter in the world with thrust vectoring engines for enhanced maneuverability, having the longest range, and being the first fighter ever exported with an electronically scanned array radar.
Today Su-30MKI fighters have been assembled in Nashik near India’s west coast for over two decades, with local industry having made significant efforts to increase the proportion of indigenous components in the aircraft. Approximately 400 Indian firms supplying components for the Su-30 currently depend very heavily on the program for their survival, while hundreds more benefit from it considerably, which has been a primary driver of the continued expansion of Indian orders for the aircraft since the mid-2000s.
Unlike China, however, which was able to fully indigenize and even improve the Su-27 well within a decade (with the exception of its engines, which took longer), estimates for the proportion of the Su-30MKI’s inputs produced in India are still at around 50 percent or less, with the aircraft’s most complex parts including its engines continuing to be produced in Russia. While this proportion is expected to increase, in particular as local industry produces new sensors and weaponry for the aircraft, a central role for Russian industry in the program is guaranteed by the limitations of India’s tech and defense sectors.
The attraction of being able to export the aircraft remains significant for multiple reasons, with one of the most obvious being that it would allow the Indian Defense Ministry to reduce or end orders for further Su-30MKIs without significantly disrupting local industry. One of the most significant implications, however, is that political restrictions on the export Russian-built fighter aircraft imposed by Moscow’s Western adversaries could allow Indian-produced Su-30s to gain serious traction on global markets in ways that Russia’s own cannot.
While the United States and its Western allies have for decades applied significant pressure on countries not to acquire Soviet or Russian fighter aircraft, with South Korea in the 1990s having been among the most notable examples, this pressure increased considerably following the passage of the Countering American Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA), which was signed into law on August 2, 2017. The act bound the United States to impose economic sanctions on any country that made major acquisitions of Russian military equipment. India would quickly become highly familiar with CAATSA’s consequences, with the United States threatening it over its acquisition of Russian S-400 air defense systems in particular, and using the act to apply pressure on the country to reduce reliance on Russian equipment and to purchase U.S. armaments – most notably F-16 fighters. This resulted in harsh rebukes from New Delhi, with then-Indian Defense Minister Nirmala Sitharaman having stressed in July 2018 that “CAATSA is not a U.N. act, it’s a U.S. act,” thereby indicating that acquisitions of Russian equipment did not violate any international norms or laws, and that Washington’s threats of sanctions were thus unreasonable.
India’s importance to the United States’ Indo-Pacific Strategy allowed it to effectively call Washington’s bluff over CAATSA, with the country proceeding with acquisitions as planned and being granted a waiver by Washington. But for many smaller states, the threats of sanctions have prevented them from proceeding with planned acquisitions. This has been reflected in the client base for Russian fighters, which has been limited to a minority of states that are for various reasons are largely insulated from threats of sanctions, whether Myanmar, Belarus, and Iran, where the local economies are already heavily sanctioned, or Algeria, Kazakhstan, and India, which have the clout needed to press Washington to overlook their acquisitions.
Several states have nevertheless been forced to cancel or suspend plans to acquire Russian fighters and other high-end military hardware due to threats of U.S. sanctions, with notable examples including Egypt’s cancellation of orders for Su-35 fighters, Indonesia’s suspension of an order for Su-35s, the Philippines’ cancellation of orders for Mi-17 and Mi-171 helicopters, and Serbia’s backing away from plans to acquire S-300 or S-400 air defense systems. For every potential contract announced, which led to a country being specifically threatened with sanctions by Washington, several more were never announced and eliminated as possibilities at early stages by countries seeking to avoid drawing Western states’ ire.
For Russia, the joint production of Su-30s in India for export has the potential to allow its fighter industry to circumvent CAATSA and appeal to a much wider range of clients that would otherwise be deterred from acquiring its aircraft. This would be far from unprecedented.
India and Russia in December 1995 jointly established the firm BrahMos Aerospace, which saw enhanced derivatives of the Soviet P-800 cruise missile developed for use in the Indian Armed Forces, including ground-, sea-, and air-launched variants. This allowed Russia to circumvent the restrictions of the Missile Technology Control Regime in providing India with long-range ground-launched missiles, while also incentivizing India to make acquisitions on a larger scale due to the benefits to local industry. However, a more recent benefit has been that these missiles are not subjected to the restrictions of CAATSA. This allowed the missile system to gain greater interest from a much wider range of clients than a Russian system could for political reasons, with the Philippine Defense Ministry having placed its first order in January 2022, while a significant number of states including Malaysia, Brazil, and Egypt have shown an interest.
With Russia having continued to export its own similar cruise missile systems to a distinct separate clientele, the BrahMos program notably demonstrated how allowing Indian-produced joint systems to be exported posed only a limited threat to the exports of Russian-built systems due to the very different political considerations faced by clients for both. Had they not been produced in India, it would never have been politically viable for the Philippines to acquire Russian-designed cruise missiles.
Despite the benefits to both Russia and India, offering the Su-30 for export has a number of drawbacks. The most significant is that Indian-produced Su-30s are expected to be less competitive in export markets than their Russian-built counterparts, political issues aside. While China was able to license produce Su-27s of a far superior quality to those built in Russia by the end of the 1990s, Indian-built Su-30s are widely reported to be of inferior quality to their Russian-built counterparts, and accordingly require more maintenance and have higher operational costs.
Production costs are also very significantly higher, with Indian-built fighters costing almost twice as much as their Russian-built counterparts at around $62 million per airframe. Estimates for the Su-30SM’s flyaway cost by contrast have consistently been well below $30 million, with many estimates remaining below $20 million, depending on rouble-dollar exchange ranges. Such cost increases during license production are far from unusual, with Japanese-produced F-15s in the 1980s and 1990s costing close to four times as much as their U.S.-built counterparts. The Su-30’s high cost effectiveness particularly in terms of its flyaway costs, and incremental improvements to production quality over two decades, nevertheless make the aircraft highly competitive even if Indian made.
A derivative of the Su-30MKI produced for export has the potential to be very different from current variants produced for the Indian Air Force, and come with options for a range of new subsystems. Notable examples include the integration of Al-41F-1S engines, which Russia began doing for its own Su-30MKI derivative, the Su-30SM2, from 2022, significantly reducing maintenance requirements and operational costs, increasing the service life and boosting range, maneuverability, and the power available for various subsystems. This upgrade has also been offered to the Indian Air Force.
While the N011M radar was considered cutting edge in 2002, it is today considered out of date, leading Indian industry to invest in developing an active electronically scanned array radar for the Su-30, which has reportedly been designated the Virupaaksha. Russia, too, has offered the more advanced Irbis-E passive electronically scanned array radar to upgrade the Su-30, and today has its own active electronically scanned array radar, the N036-1-01, in production for its Su-57 fighter which could be integrated onto an enhanced Su-30 export variant.
Integration of the Su-57’s R-77M, R-37M, and izdeliye 810 radar-guided air-to-air missiles, and a range of new air-to-surface missiles, are also significant possibilities. The new export variant also has the potential to stimulate Indian investment in developing more subsystems for the aircraft indigenously, and to redouble attention on existing development efforts such as the Virupaaksha radar to increase the aircraft’s competitiveness abroad.
The Su-30 has the potential to meet the needs of a wide range of clients, with higher-performing variants integrating improved engines, sensors, and weaponry potentially appealing to the higher end of the market, which the Russian Su-35 and Su-57 would otherwise have targeted had political restrictions not been a factor. The range of potential clients remains wide, including Egypt and Indonesia to replace the Su-35s that CAATSA prevented them from receiving, and other potentially interested parties such as the Philippines, Iraq, Peru, and Malaysia among other states reported to have seen their acquisitions choices influenced by CAATSA. Indeed, the deployment of Indian Air Force Su-30MKIs to Egypt for joint exercises in June 2022 was expected to stimulate local interest in acquiring such aircraft, with growing deployments for exercises abroad potentially helping to market the aircraft to more non-aligned states.
While the extent of Western opposition to exports of a joint Indian-built fighter remains difficult to predict, greater indigenization of the fighters in India, and support of the Indian state for the program, could lead the United States and its Western allies to limit their efforts to pressure potential clients in order to avoid compromising relations with New Delhi. With Indian officials continuing to express an interest in acquiring and license producing Russia’s newer Su-57 fifth-generation fighter, the success of a Su-30 export arrangement could increase the attraction of doing so significantly should Indian industry similarly be granted permission to export locally produced Su-57s. With Russia notably also expected to phase out production of the Su-30 domestically, potentially before the end of the decade as industry accommodates growing production of the Su-57, the Su-30’s continued production for export in India would allow clients to continue to be offered options for a lower cost heavyweight fighter class—complementing rather than competing with fighter production in Russia.