Sukhoi After the war, Sukhoi and his team were among the first Soviet aircraft designers who led the work on jet aircraft, creating several experimental jet fighters. Sukhoi started developing two jet fighters, the Sukhoi Su-5 and the Sukhoi Su-7 before 1945. The Su-5 is a mixed power jet fighter, using both a propellor and a motorjet to power it, but the experiment was later cancelled even though the fighter had a maiden flight in April 6, 1945. The Su-7 is a swept-wing, supersonic, air superiority fighter, and it was successful as it was adopted by the Soviet Air Forces in
Sukhoi Su-30MKI demonstrator and Su-30 program, being more advanced than the Su-30MK and the Chinese Su-30MKK/MK2. Russia's Defence Ministry was impressed with the type's performance envelope and ordered 30 Su-30SMs, a localised Su-30MKI, for the Russian Air Force. It features state of the art avionics developed by Russia, India and Israel for display, navigation, targeting and electronic warfare; France and South Africa provided other avionics. After two years of evaluation and negotiations, on 30 November 1996, India signed a US$1.462 billion deal with Sukhoi for 50 Russian-produced Su-30MKIs in five batches. The first batch were eight Su-30MKs, the basic version of Su-30.