As defensive orientated tactics were dropped and more aggressive stances were adopted, the requirement for a heavy fighter with a large combat radius and a precision-guided munition employment capability was placed upon the political leadership of the People's Republic of China.

[3] During a visit to the Russian Federation at the end of 1996, Chinese Premier Li Peng signed an agreement worth US$1.8 billion to purchase 38 advanced Multirole combat aircraft.

[3] Sukhoi saw enormous potential to meet China's requirement with its Su-30MK, while incorporating technology from the Su-27M, to develop a new fighter that preserved the type's iconic tall and thick Carbon-fiber-reinforced polymer fins as fuel tanks for longer range.

[3] In November 2000, "Bort 502 Blue" attended the Zhuhai Air Show and a month later the first batch of ten Su-30MKK was delivered.

[3] In July 2001, Chinese President Jiang Zemin and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, signed a deal for a further 38 aircraft.

[3] In the year 2002, the two countries were negotiating on the purchase of the Su-30MK2 for the People's Liberation Army Naval Air Force (PLANAF).

The twin rudders mainly made of carbon fiber composite material were larger on Su-30MKK in comparison to that of the original Su-30MK, but contrary to what was once erroneously claimed by some western sources, Sukhoi Design Bureau revealed later that the increased space in the rudders were used for additional fuel tanks, instead of larger communication UHF antenna.

The average Mean time between failures of AL-31F is only slightly above 500 hours, significantly lower than its western counterparts, the same problem reportedly encountered by Indian Air Force for its Su-30MKI fleet.

[citation needed] According to Sukhoi Design Bureau, many of the new avionics and upgrades of current avionics were specially developed to meet the Chinese requirement, and subsequently used on other members of the Flanker family, including the more advanced versions that appeared later, and this was mainly due to the fact that the funding for Su-30MKK was readily available in comparison to others.

The threat information obtained from RWRs can be either provided on the LCD MFDs (showing the most dangerous four targets) for the pilot in the manual mode, or be used automatically.

The fly by wire (FBW) control with quadruple redundancy designed by Russkaya Avionika is the same system used for the Su-30MKI.

Publicized photos and video clips from the official Chinese governmental sources such as CCTV-7 in 2007 and PLA pictorial magazine have confirmed the western claims of Chinese is replacing the original Russian helmet mounted sights (HMS) with more capable[citation needed] domestic ones.

The new mission computer was jointly developed by the Russian National Aeronautical System Science Research Academy and Russkaya Avionika JSC, designated as MVK, capable of performing ten billion FLOPS.

Both the SUV-VEP and SUV-P systems were adopted to upgrade the single seat Su-27SK in Chinese inventory, and a joint team of Tikhomirov Scientific Research Institute of Instrument Design (NIIP) and State Instrumentation Plant at Ryazan was named as the primary contractor.

The MK2 also features a better C4ISTAR (command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition and reconnaissance) abilities than the MKKs.

The Russian optronic pods included: In 2000, China placed an order of passive electronically scanned array radar named Sokol (Falcon), designed by Phazotron, while the radar was still under development, it is reported that China had either partially funded or joined the development, but this can not be confirmed.

However, the number of targets it can simultaneously engage is increased to six from the original four, thus fully utilizing the capability of the SUV-VEP subsystem of the onboard fire control system.

In the early 2000s, Russia had authorized the export of Pero passive electronically scanned array radar designed by Tikhomirov, to China.

The Pero antenna can be easily integrated into the existing N001VEP radar system with no significant modification by simply replacing the original slotted planar array, and thus results in increased performance.

In addition to the easy of integration, the advantage of Pero passive electronically scanned array equipped Panda radar was its weight.

All other radars offered for Su-30MK2 upgrade increase weight significantly that the center of the gravity of the aircraft is altered, resulting in the need to modify the airframe and redesign the flight control system.

Many claimed that the reason for the rejection was that Chinese discovered the same problem India had during the evaluation of the radar: although the N-011M Bars passive electronically scanned array radar offered longer range and better resistance to jamming, it had the problem of accurately and correct identifying targets at long range, while others claims China simply did not want the same system used by India.

However, both claims contradict with the official explanation of the Chinese government: the new radar weighs more than 650 kg and caused the center of gravity of the aircraft to alter significantly, thus greatly degraded the aerodynamic performance and weapon payload arrangement of the Su-30MKK, which is far less adaptable to the new heavy radar than Su-30MKI, because the two were based on two totally different airframes, a fact that is confirmed by Jane's all the World's Aircraft.

Therefore, if these radars passed Chinese tests, they will likely to be retrofitted to earlier MKK and MK2 and even possibly Shenyang J-11 due to uncertain status of MK3 project.

China has actually ordered and commissioned the Su-35S while also developing its own J-16 which are claimed to be superior to the Russian Su-30 - especially in terms of sensors & avionics when the installation of AESA radars is reported.