Seeing Aliyev pick up Pakistan’s nearly-new second-hand JF-17 Block II for domestic use made me want to complain a bit.
For small countries, once you miss the chance to buy high-end military equipment, it’s simply gone. If you can’t get it, you can’t get it. A complicated geopolitical environment will not give you a second procurement opportunity.
Because advanced fighter jets carry extremely heavy political significance. A small number of top-tier aircraft can determine the future, destiny, even the life and death of a nation of tens of millions. So if you miss the window, it’s gone — there’s no room for maneuver.
I’m talking about the ancient Nile civilization.
Egyptians were hemming and hawing: muttering about J-10s — “ah, I have political difficulties,” “ah, your fighter hasn’t been tested in real combat,” “ah, I think the KF-21 Block II is quite nice, it’s a fifth-gen and the Koreans will even give me Hyundai production lines,” “ah, can your fighter be a bit cheaper?”
While Egypt was dithering endlessly, Pakistan used PL-15s to basically livestream a full lap of kills to the Egyptian Air Force’s main fighter fleet. Then the Egyptians quieted down and wanted to buy.
Then America, their big daddy, stepped out and looked down on them: “You want to buy PL-15s? My dad—your grandpa—is still hanging AIM-7 Sparrows on 40-year-old F-15Is. And you think you’re worthy?”
After the fact, Egypt can try to excuse itself: “Ah, how were we supposed to know India and Pakistan would fight a whole engagement while we were busy evaluating aircraft?” But that’s still their problem. As a small country, you’re simply not in a position to look left and right. When you get an opportunity, you have to seize it. Because in 2024 the J-10CE was still “a shoddy, untested eastern-barbarian F-16 knockoff,” but by 2025 it had become something akin to a nuclear-equivalent strategic asset.
Just imagine: if Project 906 had been delayed a few years due to the economic conditions of the 1990s, and then the 1995 Taiwan Strait Crisis hit — the Yeltsin government might never have sold us the Su-27 at all. Our entire aviation industry would have faced unknown consequences. Thankfully, we bought when we did.
But Aliyev, in order to get his fleet together before geopolitical uncertainties emerge, would rather take second-hand jets than risk missing the window. Meanwhile Egypt’s best BVR capability might still be the R-77 on MiG-29s.
Any after-the-fact explanation can only be chalked up to the “Nile Civilization Syndrome”: Upper and Lower Egypt gained their statehood too easily — what they really needed was to be slapped a few thousand years by Mother Yellow River .
So the pessimists really don’t need to start bleating “ahhh doomed, ahhh they won’t buy our fighter jets” whenever some country chooses not to buy from us. If they don’t buy, it’s their brain damage. They’re simply unworthy and preparing themselves for national ruin, that’s all. We don’t lose anything.
