If they could find the money for three dozen then those earliest models could get transferred out of active units and form a training group. That alleviates the pressures to standardize them on par with the others.

The neglected aspect of a SAC are the intelligence gathering wings. Don’t forget that you need to be able to monitor electromagnetic sources, listen in on communications, fly reconnaissance, probe the near national boundaries while in international airspace for long periods of time watching responses to your activity, covertly blend in with commercial traffic, etc. It’s not all about nuclear options.

As for the COIN aspect, India has their own indigenous trainers they could use close in plus could convert some transports for gunships.

I’m not sure any metric is going to paint the Harrier of any variant in a huge positive over the A-10’s track record.

The Goshawk is beefed up, but its counterbalanced by limiting it quite a bit in other ways like strict wing loading and maximum landing weight something like 3 tons lower than the more modern Hawk trainers.

This guy outlines some of the design decisions: http://www.shabee.info/?tag=boeing-t-45a-goshawk

This prolonged process is making a mockery out of this whole competition. Perhaps the Brazilians like not spending money more than they like the idea of national security.

The F-35 is going to save us money long term, just as the F-16 saved us when it replaced the A-7, F-4, etc. Keep the course or the boat will lose it’s way, wander aimlessly about, eventually smashing on uncharteded rocks. The U.S. economy needs the F-35 or the long term health of the domestic arms producers will suffer. Your pocketbooks will be better off 20 years from now getting behind the F-35 rather than trying to hold the old airframes together over that same timeframe. You can spend all the money from the F-35 program to soup up older airframes and motors, but eventually the price of consummables for them will mount to a bigger bill and you’ll still need a new replacement. Better to make the step forward with this clean slate program.

Your logic is flawed. Sorties are sorties. Doesn’t matter if six airframes or 600 flew all of them, the loss rate for the Harriers was 2.5 times as often per sortie!

Edit: I didn’t refresh the iPod before posting. Looks like you rephrased your post.