The SU-37 is a great design, my disbelief was not at that, but that you could suggest with a straight face that the US government would purchase a foreign design when it could build a native one at 10x the price.
The cold war isn't over, not by long. It's just switched frequencies, but national pride and technological prestige are still very active currencies that can be spent politically.
Our battling space programs were only half "We've got big missiles" posturing, they were also advertisements for a way of life. "Our rockets are big, proof that communism is The Answer." "Our men have landed on the moon, proof that US capitalism is The Answer."
It was the most expensive marketing campaign undertaken, and in the end, we seem to have come out on top.
But it's not over yet.
We're not going to buy a russian fighter (even if it's great) if Russia can turn say "Our version of capitalism is great. Look, even the US military uses it!"
This, plus the fact that very few of the russian aerospace companies operate in US congressional districts, and an arrangement like this, even licensed, just won't "fly".
