Grandfather's axe, or how to keep developing missiles & aircraft

Following on from something said in the Rafale thread, I’ve wondered about whether the Sidewinder/Standard missile model could be applied to some current fighters, that is, rather than new designs from scratch, just keep developing the old types until there’s nothing left of the original.

To some extent it’s been done with the F-16, but the basic airframe remains much the same, limiting it. Additional equipment won’t fit in that compact fuselage. Gripen seems to be on the way to it.

Could this model be applied to Typhoon & Rafale? Avionics are being upgraded. What if the next development, instead of being a new aircraft, is a new airframe built around the latest iteration (whatever that is at the time) of the systems? It might even be possible to design one airframe for both Rafale & Typhoon systems.

This couldn’t be a short-term project, but perhaps for when early models need replacement.

Let’s imagine the new aircraft are called Tempest & Zephyr. 😉