"The reason (excuse) given for discarding the MiGs by the government"
And yet somehow magically BAF was able to maintain Mig-29 when BAL came to power. Not only that, they also suddenly had funds to overhaul them while maintaining other aircraft and buy new one including other projects. Surprise, surprise.
It was mentioned numerous times that BGI was a stop-gap at first phase which is still the best version of F-7 and I already mentioned above about Su-30 and Mig-29SMT. After seeing what Russia do with the buyers, glad we didn't go for any of these. And 2nd time Russia only tender was failed thanks to Myanmar and Russia. Now we're in 3rd attempt with huge possibility to fail again.
People need to read carefully and remember old infos. Somehow money is always available for stealing or pole dancing but not for country's security.
But by the 2010s, the JF-17 is already a mature plane, the BAF decided to go and buy additional F-7BGI. Which is a downgrade from the MiG-29s.
Only Block 1 was available at that time and that didn't have composites in air frame. Bangladesh military had (probably still has) a rule that a product has to have export success to at least three countries. (with some exception). More interesting thing is BAF didn't even bother to evaluate them, they were evaluating other aircraft better than JF-17.
Also I find it interesting that BAF traded the Su-30 and goes for the Yak-130 instead, which is weird.
Not really weird. Probably they realized they didn't have any modern training aircraft to prepare for new combat aircraft. T-37s were retired and we only had 7 L-39s for the basic and advanced jet training so there were lots of pressure on them. Also we had to replace A-5 and FT-6 of 21 squadron with a new aircraft capable of carry out ground attack so Yak-130 was selected because of price. Some idiots cry about procuring trainers but make sense why BAF bought Yak-130 and K-8W. L-39s will be retired in few years.
Also remaining F-7MBs were transferred to 25 squadron for fighter OCU and F-6 were retired so BAF had to buy a fighter so they went for something they are already familiar with. 10 years of negligence (even more) damaged BAF a lot.