But nobody has passed comment on the HAL Tejas as an option!!!
The other obvious one no-one has mentioned - if you can't beat 'em, join 'em and get Flankers! They're rugged and reliable, and remarkably cheap for a big, twin engined plane, so even those of us on a budget could afford
lots of them. It has 14 hardpoints to carry a huge load of weapons, lots of range, and is probably more agile than any other fighter on the planet. If you want “commonality” between different roles and forces, it comes in a variety of types including single seat air defence fighter, two-seat multi-role fighter, naval version, two seat dedicated strike jet, and super-agile thrust-vectoring models.
If you can't get a licence to make them yourselves, I'd go for Chinese-made over Russian (who have some, er, quality control issues...), and you could either get just the airframe and engines and put in your own avionics, or just go the whole hog and take them as they are, since most of our electronics come from China anyway...
The other major advantage of getting Flankers is we would then know
exactly what potential enemies can do. It creates a level playing field, and given the West is always claiming to have better training and tactics (and I don't doubt it) we'd be pretty secure we'd win any clash.
Paul