The Soviets had flying radar pickets before Moss, its just that the Moss was a serious upgrade over the primitive systems they had beforehand. The only real disadvantage the Moss had was finding targets marred by ground clutter, which made them useless against cruise missiles.

Don’t forget that before Flagon there were a couple of other tries by Sukhoi. Firebar was the Soviet equivalent of the french Vautour. Yakovlev used two smaller engines in the Firebar while Sukhoi tried their luck with a single massive engine with similar power overall. The twin engines on Firebar may not have had the hot-rod ride of the Fitter, but they allowed a margin of safety and much more room for equipment than what Sukhoi was able to do with the single, monster engine. The Firebar also massively out-ranged most of the other interceptors which is why it lived on so long.

I would take the Mirage F1.M53 over the Kfir.

I more or less equated the JH-7A to the A-6.

You could give it a thick wing for internal carriages and tvc to make it less dependent on control surfaces.

A-6F made too much sense on the same ship that used F/A-18A’s and B’s. The A-6E was running out of hours and airframes so something had to be done. The A-6F was a serious rehash of the A-6E with modern components and it halved the upkeep. Unfortunately the F/A-18 was half the man-hours of the A-6F so it made sense to move to a Hornet replacement. The Hornet replacing the A-6E would also park three airframes in the space of two A-6E’s that it would replace, which excited the Navy.

So the F/A-18 must have been hands down better than an A-6F, right? Two factors worked against that theory. The first was the number of sorties that a carrier could muster did not call for the larger number of airframes. And the sad fact was the USN was already projecting that each carrier would have to draw down the number of airframes onboard a carrier, which meant it was going to have space for the A-6F regardless. The second factor was that the F/A-18 as it aged quickly grew to require much more money and man-hours to maintain than it was presented. The larger airframes, A-6F and F-14D, are more efficient use of the carrier because they both allowed larger loads over longer distances.

The A-6F was considered a dog because it was limited to subsonic speeds. The F/A-18 was always presented as more survivable over target, but the truth was that modern SAMs and AAA required flight profiles that the A-6F was easily capable of performing. The lack of supersonic dash speed was never an issue. More importantly the A-6F, due to the nature of its design, was more efficient throughout the mission profiles. The argument for the F/A-18 then evolved to portray the A-6F as being unable to protect itself while the F/A-18 could carry AIM-9’s for self-defense. The funny thing was that because the A-6F was AGM-88 capable it also carried the necessary electronics to fire AIM-9, too.

Related News:

Taiwan To Upgrade IDFs, Buy 50 Trainers

The upgrade is a US decision. The same source of the article is saying their President has renewed calling for F-16’s instead.

Such a small order at only 42. The way I see it is that the UK could offer a short term lease for that many they leave idle as it is. Then they offer manufacturing rights to tranche 3 and an AESA partnership that includes upgrading F-2A. Advantage to Japan is that they can immediately draw down F-4 fleet and replace them 1:1 until the new airframes are manufactured.