🏆 Top 10 Greatest Defence Procurement Deals Ever Made
(Ranked by pure savage ROI)
| Rank | Deal | Buyer | Year | USD Bn | What They Got | Why Top 10 | Key People |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Israeli Lavi → CAC J-10 | China | 1987–1995 | ≈ 0.35 | Entire 4th-gen fighter programme: FBW, delta-canard, composites, avionics, wind-tunnel data | Saved 15–25 years + $15–25 B R&D → 720+ J-10s + exports | Song Wencong, Moshe Keret |
| 2 | Soviet MiG-21 line → Chengdu J-7/F-7 | China | 1961–1964 | ≈ 0.15 | Complete factories, tooling, engines – everything | >2,400 airframes + exports to 20+ countries. Birth of Chinese military aviation | Khrushchev, Mao, Liu Yalou, Tu Jida |
| 3 | Russian Su-27 licence → J-11/J-15/J-16 | China | 1996–2004 | 2.5 | Heavy Flanker tech → 600+ fully indigenous copies with Chinese everything | The most successful Sino-Russian military-technical cooperation card of the early 21st century. | Yeltsin, Jiang Zemin, Mikhail Pogosyan |
| 4 | NK Scud/No-dong → Shahab/Sejjil/Ghaem-100 | Iran | 1987–1998 | ≈ 0.1 | Full liquid → solid-fuel missile tech chain to 2,000+ km + SLV | Existential deterrent for pocket money while sanctioned to hell | Kim Jong-il, Hassan Tehrani Moghaddam † |
| 5 | US F-16/F-35 offsets → KAI KF-21 Boramae | South Korea | 1994–2025 | ≈ 10–12 | Brutal offsets → Asia’s first non-superpower quasi-5th-gen fighter | Paid full price but stole the entire cookbook anyway. Now exporting | Ilwoo Lee, President Park Geun-hye |
| 6 | MiG-25 intel (Belenko + captured) → J-8II | China | 1976–1980s | < 0.05 | Secrets of the fastest interceptor + materials | Global intel windfall turned into Mach 2+ interceptor family | Viktor Belenko, Col. Yao Junmin |
| 7 | Korean K2 tech → Altay MBT | Turkey | 2008–2018 | ≈ 0.54 | Full modern MBT powerpack + fire-control | From Leopard beggar to exporting one of the world’s best tanks | Ismail Demir, Hyundai Rotem team |
| 8 | US F-14 fleet + 45-year clandestine sustainment | Iran | 1974–2025 | 2.0 + ≈ 0.4 | Only non-US F-14 operator – still ~45 flying with Iranian everything | Ultimate middle finger to sanctions. No one else kept a 1970s supercruiser alive this long | Shah Pahlavi, Brig. Gen. Ahmad Mehrnia & IRIAF engineers |
| 9 | Chengdu J-10CE squadron package | Pakistan | 2021–2025 | ≈ 1.9 | 36 most advanced fighters in South Asia + PL-15 missiles | Leapfrogged India’s Rafales for peanuts on the price of a Rafale squadron | ACM Zaheer Babar Sidhu, Yang Wei |
| 10 | F-35A with full Israeli sovereignty package | Israel | 2010–2025 | ≈ 7.0 (75 jets) | Source code, Israeli C4/ECM/weapons, no US kill switch → unique F-35I Adir | Only ally that turned the F-35 into a truly national asset | Netanyahu, Moshe Ya’alon, Marillyn Hewson |
China appears four times. Iran twice.
The only Western-aligned countries on the list are the ones who negotiated like their survival depended on it
(because it did).
Everyone else who paid sticker price and said “thank you sir” is on the Darwin Award list instead.
The only Western-aligned countries on the list are the ones who negotiated like their survival depended on it
(because it did).
Everyone else who paid sticker price and said “thank you sir” is on the Darwin Award list instead.
