Objectively it has to be Mirage 2000. But I have always had a soft spot for Etendard IV.

The Étendard always looked odd when they added that ugly nose strake. The original IVM prototype was a classic transonic design though:

Anyway 60 years from breaking the world long distance speed record in Jan 1958 (speed over 1,000km) to dropping its last bomb over Iraq in 2017. And still going in Argentine service. A classic.

I’m surprised that all the proposed T-X aircraft are so short/fat… seems like long/thin (area ruled) would make sense for transonic performance.

Picture a two-seat coke bottle planform like the F11F Tiger or Super Etendard, which were both originally light fighters with good lift/drag ratios (due to carrier requirements and weak engines). With a modern non-afterburning engine (F404 or F414) a repeat design would be competitive (and low risk).

To illustrate, the Super Etendard could hit M0.99 straight and level at a wide range of altitudes (from 20K to 35K feet). It could easily accelerate supersonic by “zoom diving”, hitting Mach 1.3 by diving from 41K to 27K feet. At which point it could level off and supercruise for a bit (perhaps slowly losing some speed/altitude). All this with only 11,000lbs of thrust!

A low drag planform also enables good maneuverability for subsonic training, better for example than the vaunted A-4M Skyhawk… The Super Etendard, again, could sustain 6.2g at sea level, despite having a fairly modest T/W. With a slightly more powerful engine it could probably meet the T-X rules, which only require “sustaining” 6.5g for ~10 seconds at 15K feet (since the USAF allows for losing 10% speed and 2K ft altitude, the trainer can actually use up to ~600ft/s of potential energy (Ps) during the maneuver and still meet the rules!). The Super Etendard also has a high airframe structural limit of 7.2g-8.6g, useful for practicing shorter, sharp instantaneous turns.

Maneuverability of a low-drag transonic planform… the Super Etendard outmaneuvers the A-4M and F-4J!
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A pic to illustrate… someone kit-bashed a two-seater trainer Super Etendard (backseat replaces the electronics bay and 10% internal fuel)! 🙂
http://scalemodel.forumactif.org/t5168-super-etendard-biplace
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F11F Tiger… good enough for the Blue Angels, good enough for T-X?

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Super Etendard #1, the first production jet, still going strong this weekend… 38 years after its first flight!

Markings under the cockpit show that it dropped 7 GBUs in combat over its lifetime. The other SEM this weekend dropped 15 GBUs.

Note the special commemorative paint…

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https://m.facebook.com/Flying-Spirit-940114662725422/

What 2/3 new Su-30 lifetimes? The Su-30MKI has a service life of 6000 hours and that may also well get extended based on fatigue studies that will be carried out whenever they approach the latter period of their service life.

I know that the Mirage-2000 has plenty of life left in its airframe, but the original service life of both the Mirage-2000 and the Su-30MKI is 6000 hours and we don’t know exactly how much additional life the IAF will get out of its Mirage upgrade nor from the Su-30MKI SLEP that will come eventually.

No, we do know the maximum life for each. As I stated, 9,000hrs for the Mirage 2000 vs. 6,000 hours for the Su-30.

It is VERY VERY likely that the Su-30 can’t be extended beyond 6,000 hours. Part of the problem is that they simply aren’t built to the same quality standards, but the real issue is that due to low availability, at the current rate of flying it will take them 52 years to reach the 6,000 hour mark! (Currently they are being overhauled every 14 years before they even hit the 1,500hour mark)

At that point the Su-30 will be totally obsolete and not worth life extending even if the airframe can take it (and the problem isn’t the airframe but the low-quality sub-systems that won’t have any life left in them, and will long have stopped production, especially the engines).

Russian “quality” has its price.

In the naval aviation realm, France should have developed a carrier-capable multirole Mirage F1M (preferably M53 powered) in the early 70s, instead of wasting time with the Jaguar M, warmed-up Super Etendard and Crusader upgrades.

If the Cold War had gone hot, the European buyers of the F16A would have regretted not buying the Mirage F1-M53 instead.

Luckily for them, the wars that did come generously waited for the F16 MLU upgrade to fix the F-16As limited capabilities, and were ideally suited to close air support (instead of more stressful high-altitude BVR scenarios).

and what about a Mirage ?
http://z11.invisionfree.com/TSR2_SIG/index.php?showtopic=34

How the RAF almost acquired Mirage IVs: An insider’s story
http://hushkit.wordpress.com/2013/05/23/how-the-raf-almost-acquired-mirage-ivs/

A fascinating episode that is rarely discussed is how close Britain’s RAF got to adopting Mirage IVs. This insider’s account of this unusual episode in aviation’s annals is taken from Charles Gardner’s ‘British Aircraft Corporation – A History’. This true story starts shortly after the shock-cancellation of the BAC TSR.2…

…The idea was to get the government to take jointly made Mirage IV airframes fitted with Spay engines instead of buying the F-111. This, BAC argued, could provide a highly efficient TSR.2 replacement aircraft, fully capable of performing the TSR.2 tasks, at a total cost, for seventy-five aircraft of under £2 million each.

Mirage IV flight tests as a bomber (8x 1,000lb bombs) for the RAF requirement (1965)

Other view

Nothing there that LCS can’t have a module set made for (even the 8xHarpoon class ASM & tactical VLS for 32 ESSM-class missile – 4xMk41 would do). Even the same 57mm gun and 2xtwin 30mm set that everyone criticizes as inadequate.

A bit more survivable hull, twice the crew, and a lot slower.

Indeed, the Malaysian Gowind basically is LCS without the speed requirement.

This makes for an interesting comparison of trade-offs. In return for a 12-knot loss in sprint speed, you get:

IMHO a slightly enlarged Gowind (in order to fit a double hangar) would make for a very good paper benchmark for the future LCS Flight II “frigate”.