With active missiles and guided munitions, qualitative improvement is dramatically improved

Except that standoff weapons proliferation has dramatically dropped the need to discard droptanks.

I can imagine that far fewer innocent airliners will get taken out by drones than trigger happy SAM operators.

My thought is limited warfare may actually become commonplace

Does the SA have a larger nose? It looks longer and wider to my eyeball

And are those canard winglets some kind of MAWS?

They’d be better off going F-16 Blk 52+ with CFT and call it a day. Could probably buy 24 rather than the 18 at the going prices. And the Super Hornets have so little in common with Hornet, there is absolutely no justification for it.

Serbia can’t even fly G-4 or G-22 due to budget lapses. They obviously cannot afford MiG-29, even if gifted to them.

Aermacchi and Yakovlev always targeted different engines for their markets. Yak-130 intended to use a Salyut built Al-225 and the Aermacchi plan was Honeywell F124. Not sure how FADEC equipped engines change FCS design, but the engines were only really similar is overall output.

MAKO was the AT-2000 program from the late 1980’s between Aermacchi and Dornier. Aermacchi left the program and developed the joint venture between itself and Yakovlev, opting for a twin-engine planform. Aermacchi once again broke away from the partnership with Yakovlev and evolved their joint work into M-346.