What "heavy equipment" are you even talking about?
$28 billion in heavy equipment, including tractors and trucks, along with other farming and industrial equipment.
$15 billion in tanks, APCs, and other major military equipment.
$10 billion in industrial electronics (robots, controlling machinery, machine tools).
$7 billion in large industrial generators, dynamos, and other large power production components.
India is far more worried about China then they are Pakistan. They aren't building CV's, SSNs, and other warships to fight Pakistan.
OK, now go and look at a map. Compare where India meets China, and where it meets Pakistan.
Now exactly how much good would a carrier do in a conflict with China? That makes about as much sense as 35 years ago claiming that the Soviets were increasing their navy in order to win in Afghanistan.
And no, they are not worried about China. They have this amazing buffer between their two nations, called the Himalayan Mountains that sits right between the two nations.
But here, look at history. Way back in 1962, there was a series of border skirmishes between the two nations. At the end of a month of conflict (which involved no Naval assets on either side) nothing really changed, other than both sides finally settled on where the border was.
However, that conflict did result in China becoming a major arms exporter to India's major regional adversary. Yes, Pakistan.
11 countries have lined up to buy F-35s so apparently there is a market for them. We sell almost twice as much arms on the world market then Russia does, even with the need for congressional approval, so apparently theres a market for Americans arms as well.
Primarily in NATO. And the rest to other high value economies that such an aircraft would be a benefit. Like the 30+ that South Korea is buying.
And yea, we export a lot of weapons, I never said we did not. In fact, the one area where our arms exports dwarf that of Russia is in our Naval exports. We sell and repair-upgrade a huge number of Navy ships all over the world. Other than subs and a few cruisers Russia has never really had much luck in Naval exports other than to a few select nations.
Do not equate our military exports, with a large number of nations wanting-needing stealth fighters. If you look at most of the countries buying (Poland, Israel, South Korea, etc), they are nations that have been attacked in recent years, or are under threat of attack.
That makes no sense. of course the platform that detects the enemy first is going to win almost all the time. besides "stealth" is simply one arrow in the quiver. The avionice s and technology in an airplane like the F-35 is fusion based with the stealth into a war winning package. And the prices for current F-35 lots are even cheaper then many legacy fighters. Nobody said stealth aircraft are invisible but they are "war winning". As a strike aircraft the F-35 can launch its weapons outside the detection envelope of enemy radar networks, the B-2 and coming B-21 even more so.
Stealth aircraft are like CV's. If they are so irrelevant why are these countries spending so much of their wealth building and maintaining them? Or buying them? Thats a rhetorical question BTW.
But stealth does not really prevent detection. As I said, these are not the "Invisible Planes" of Wonder Woman. In fact, if you remember we lost a Stealth platform over 20 years ago, to a glorified militia using 40 year old equipment.
All stealth does is mean that an aircraft is harder to detect, and harder to fire weapons at because they need a strong return signal in order to fire. But as we saw in former Yugoslavia, if a nation is willing to do some software hacks this can be overridden, and a hard launch order given even with an incomplete RADAR return.
I spent over 5 years in Air Defense. I participated in operations with the PATRIOT system against F-22 and F-35 fighters. We could still detect them, they just had to be closer first.
And do not forget, we (and others) still have other ways to detect aircraft, including visually and through audio systems. Those were big deals prior to stealth, and they are making a comeback. And stealth does not a damned thing against heat and visually guided systems, it only works against RADAR guided systems.
And no, CVs are of rather limited use, only in very specific situations. How much good did they do us in Afghanistan? We only use them so damned much because we have so many of them. No other nations really use them all that much, mostly as flagships for their fleets, with the carriers dedicated to more of a defensive role for the fleet than an offensive arm like the US does.
