BELIEVE IT WHEN YOU SEE IT: Russia’s Rostec to co-develop 5th-gen fighter with UAE.

Russia defense heavyweight Rostec will partner with the UAE Ministry of Defence to co-develop a fifth-generation light combat fighter, company CEO Sergey Chemezov said at IDEX in Abu Dhabi Monday.

Development, which is based upon its MiG-29 twin-engine fighter aircraft, will kick off in 2018, and will take an estimated seven to eight years, Chemezov said during a media briefing with journalists. He elaborated in an exclusive one-on-one interview with Defense News.

“That’s not fast, because it takes quite a long period of time to develop,” he said speaking through a translator. “We anticipate local production here in the Arab Emirates, for the needs of Emirates. And of course [we expect development to support the needs of] the neighboring countries.”

The prospect of building a fully modern, fifth-generation jet on top of a fourth-generation platform which first flew in 1977 seems dubious at best. Russia’s current effort at building a stealth fighter, Sukhoi’s PAK-FA, has proven so troublesome that Russia’s partners in India nearly dropped out of the program, and Russia herself now plans to field only a few of the jets.