Judging by a number of hints and reservations, the promising Russian Su-75 fighter (Checkmate) is being created primarily for sale to the Middle East.
What kind of buyer country can we talk about, what opportunities do Russian manufacturers lure the customer with – and will this machine be in service with the domestic Air Force?
The demonstration of the prototype of the Russian Checkmate fighter at the Dubai Airshow 2021 International Airshow was the debut of this single-engine machine abroad. The new Checkmate, which also received the official, "boring" alphanumeric name Su-75, was presented in the Rostec presentation video as a chess knight - an easy piece that can suddenly change its course throughout a game of chess and bring the player a beautiful and unexpected victory.
It was in this vein that the potential possibilities of Checkmate were revealed to potential buyers at the air show. His commercial claimed that the new fighter was ready to fight in the sky both with the enemy's "pawns", whose role was assigned to a very advanced and technologically advanced Akinci drone ("Akinci") of Turkish production, and against the "king of the sky", which became recognizable by its silhouette American F-35.
Such a choice of aerial opponents for the Su-75 is not accidental. Rostec is positioning its brainchild for a specific target audience: these are third world countries that, for one reason or another, either did not get into the F-35 program initially, or cannot count on access to it even in the future. Turkey, Iran, the monarchies of the Persian Gulf, India, the countries of Africa and Southeast Asia, and possibly Latin American customers - this is a promising market for Checkmate sales. And this, of course, is not the NATO countries, which were securely "strapped" to the gears of the American military-industrial complex through enslaving participation in the F-35 project.
It can be said that the Russian manufacturer for the first time gave a clear hint who exactly he sees as the first buyer of a promising car. The foreign premiere in the Arab Emirates is indicative, the visit of the UAE Prime Minister to the fighter stand is indicative. Finally, the phrase of the head of Rostec Sergey Chemezov is also indicative: "The United Arab Emirates are already interested, they want to look at and discuss the car in detail." Hints of the Middle Eastern market are scattered in the presentation video.
It was strongly emphasized that the architecture and design solutions used in Checkmate will be as open and "friendly" to customers as possible, and the status of the buyer can, under a number of conditions, be turned into the status of a licensed manufacturer of a new fighter, writes the Business newspaper Vzglyad.
