Actually, the authors of the interview seem to have done the 705 tally. Rupprecht only listed his totals for various flanker types. Not including all types, as he did not mention Su-30 or Su-35.
If one included those and used Rupprecht's numbers from the article, then the tally would be 794 to 830.
I guess if Rupprecht still believes there are some Su-27UB still in active service, (without them there'd be just 100 or so J-11A/Su-27 listed, as opposed to the mentioned 120-130) then it'd prudent to listen to him. So i'll have to correct my assessment of those initial flankers.
Yeah, this is very bewildering. When other strange claims from the report are also considered, it makes one wonder just how much of that whole report was sloppily written. But what's also strange is, why would so much of the report be sloppily written, seemingly relying on very old figures, while some other parts of the report seem to be disclosing new info that was nowhere else written in the West. Like the number of ICBMs being 300!
It'd give credence to the idea that the report is a work of many different individuals, and certain parts were given much more attention that others. Perhaps certain parts (like the nuke arsenal) have purposefully been written to make a splash in the media, perhaps even being written using access to actual US intelligence data. As opposed to the rest of report, which may have gotten the poor treatment - having low level interns just use open source data, possibly even just copy pasting old data from old reports.
Because - how can just 800 of 1800 fighters be 4th gen - is beyond me. (Not to mention that the same report says in in a different place there are 1900 fighters, and not 1800)
Such a tally would be possible only if J16, J10B/C, Su-35 and J11B were counted as 4th gen, while J10 were not. And J15 were not (which would be crazy as those are the same planes as J11B). And of course all the older flanker were considered 3rd gen. And J20 were also not counted as theyre, what, too advanced? So technically they're not 4th gen? In most likelihood, some of those assessment are either bollocks or are many years out of date, as someone already pointed out. If only some other parts of the report were also out of date too, then it would be easier to dismiss it whole.