Pocket Stealth fighter – asymmetric ace card?

I may have mentioned this concept before. All we keep hearing is how expensive stealth technology is blah blah. Certainly many in the US aviation industry benefit from the expensive perception. I think the challenge is not justifying the massive expense of programs like F-22 and F-35, it’s in seeing how cheap a usable stealth aircraft can be built.

I am not thinking in terms of matching the F-22. Obviously capability needs to be scaled back and anyway not every country needs an F-22. Imagine for a moment that the MBB Lampyridae had been built, and/or an equivalent aircraft, and that somehow either Iraq or Serbia had obtained even a small number. What would the implications have been for the Coalition/NATO air campaigns have been?

I suspect that even a modest capability stealth point defence fighter would have vastly increased the expense and effort of those air campaigns. I don’t think they’d have defeated the western powers, but they could have messed things up enough that an alternative political settlement may have evolved.

A relatively affordable stealth fighter could feature:

Smallish airframe size, about the size of an advanced trained
Short range and limited performance
Limited agility – maybe fixed leading edges, unmoving canards etc.
Mature FBW tech as used in some trainers
Single non-afterburning jet
No radar, RWR, etc just IRST
Basic RAM
Two IIR missiles stowed internally
Limited cockpit

I think the USAF played with this idea as “sneaky peat” in the ATF program (?)

This sketch is not a specific design, just to illustrate the concept.