No one from Russia, it seems, can give a convincing answer to this very simple question. Earlier last February during the Aero India 2009 exhibition, Mikhail Pogosyan, who presently wears two hats?Director-General of RAC-MiG and Director-General of Sukhoi Corp?had made two interesting revelations: one, that the MiG-35?s single-seat and tandem-seat variants will be rolled from the Nizhny Novgorod-based Sokol Aircraft Plant by August this year; and two, there would be maximum mission systems commonality, inclusive of the AESA radar, between the MiG-35 and the Fifth Generation Fighter Aircraft (FGFA) that will be co-developed by India?s Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd (HAL) and Russia?s United Aircraft Corp (UAC). Both these revelations have since been contradicted with the passage of time. The Indian Air Force (IAF) had expected the roll-out of the single-seat and tandem-seat versions of the MiG-35 latest by mid-October and be made available for a week-long phase of flight evaluations within India later this year, followed by a second round of evaluations (involving test-firings of precision-guided munitions) in Russia within the first quarter of next year. And as for systems commonality, especially pertaining to the AESA radar, it became evident last August that it will be the Zhuk-AE from Phazotron JSC that will go on board the MiG-35, while the FGFA will be equipped with a variant of the MIRES Sh-121 AESA-based multi-mode radar, which is now being developed by Tikhomirov NIIP. The Zhuk-AE AESA which has repeatedly been shown on board the MiG-29M2 No154 M-MRCA (built in 1990) since 2007 is now officially described as being a functional technology demonstrator containing 600 transmit/receive modules, while the definitive series-production variant of the Zhuk-AE will have 1,000 T/R modules. And the MiG-29M2 No154, which has deceptively been painted as the MiG-35 and been used in the past for giving joyrides to some India-based broadcast media journalists and a few IAF pilots, is now being described by RAC-MiG as just a ?proof-of-concept? demonstrator!

It has now emerged that RAC-MiG had built two prototypes of the shipborne MiG-29 as part of the contract to supply 12 MiG-29Ks and four MiG-29KUBs to the Indian Navy. These two prototypes?a tandem-seat MiG-29KUB No947 and a single-seat MiG-29K No941?made their maiden flights in January and June 2007, respectively. (By the way, these two prototypes were the first brand-new MiG-29s to be built by RAC-MiG after a gap of 15 years!) Following the conclusion of the flight certification and weapons qualification phases, the single-seat MiG-29K No941 was and is still being subjected to a modification programme aimed at deriving the definitive single-seat MiG-35. This perhaps explains why RAC-MiG has publicly displayed (during MAKS 2007 and MAKS 2009) the MiG-29KUB No947, but has never even revealed the existence of the Indian Navy-specific MiG-29K No941 to date. It is now believed that the Russian Air Force, as part of a Kremlin-initiated bailout package for debt-ridden RAC-MiG, will place an order for 24 MiG-35s by 2012, while the Russian Navy will procure 24 MiG-29K/KUBs in 2012 to replace the existing Su-33 shipborne combat aircraft.

According to RAC-MiG, the definitive MiG-35 will have larger wings to accommodate 10 underwing weapon stations, plus a belly-mounted station to house the Novator-built 3M-14AE Kalibr-A subsonic 290km-range air-to-ground land attack cruise missile. To make the MiG-35 a truly network-centric platform RAC-MiG has already initiated industrial participation negotiations with Israel?s SIBAT, plus avionics OEMs from Italy (Finmeccanica/Elettronica) and France (SAGEM for the Sigma-95 RLG-INS, which is also on board the Su-30MKI).?Prasun K. Sengupta

Source: Trishul Group