India is in the market for New Fighters. What would you buy????

On Nov 3, 3:24 am, Tiger wrote:
India's AF is looking to make a huge purchase & production deal. $10
Billion dollars for 126 aircraft. They are looking to replace their Mig
21's. There are about 6 Firms/ planes up for consideration.
Eruofighter Typhoon
Saab Gripen
Boeing's F-18
Lock Mart's F16
Mig's 29 & 35
Dassualt's Rafale & Mirage series

So if you had $10 Billion to spend? What would you buy for your force??
Keep in mind the needs of India, the potential foes & that any US plane
come with political strings attached (like Pakastians f-16 deal).

Rough field capability would be a plus; do the Saab and Mig offferings
still favor that? Eurofighter and Dassualt are probably very motivated
to negotiate price, but maybe Mig most of all... logical winner?

But I would expand the search box. On the more futuristic side,
consider unmanned hunter-killer drones like General Atomics MQ-9
Reaper, adding sidewinders. Using the price from Wikipedia, India
could afford 12000 of these instead of 126 of the above. Well, maybe
China or sombody could figure out how to jam UAV's.

My personal favorite would be a low tech option that takes advantage
of India's vast manpower. I'm thinking of a plywood overcast: 126000
rocket/cruise-missle carrying Mosquito's. Get the DeHavilland assembly
plans from the internet, and make it's plywood from recycled scrap
wood in a thousand village workshops. For engines, Russia must have
heaps of worn out Kuznetsov turboprops used on Tupolev Bear bombers -
those awesomely fast ones with counterrotating props might be rebuilt
cheaply. Quantity has a quality of it's own, and that is India's
forte.