AAM-4 is akin to an Active Flash, only they gave it a better rocket motor and the active seeker of AMRAAM’s competitor.

The post-WW2 restrictions on German conventional armaments was not all black and white on what was allowed. Germany had to petition for permission to acquire certain weapons. The last restrictions were lifted in 1984 at the height of the Cold War. Radar guided missile restrictions were held up nearly to that point. The same restrictions keeps the German military down in its head count.

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The 20mm versus 30mm argument is purely subjective and there is no truly correct answer. The French didn’t find too much fault with them or they would have changed them out.

Its a shame there was no Crusader IV. The F-16A probably was more or less one. I cannot imagine that if the Crusader III had found funding then it wouldn’t have found foreign sales. It would not have looked too bad against the competition. And there is no reason the Sparrows couldn’t have been swapped for Super 530, Aspide, Skyflash, etc. Eventually maybe it would have acquired the F-16’s radar and AMRAAM capabilities. Heck, the UK might have snatched them up rather than hold on to their EE Lightnings. Crusader III with three Skyflash under the chin, neck mounted Red Top heatseekers, a pair of drop tanks with side-mounts on their pylons for Sidewinders, backed by the cannon (ADEN?) for close in work.

Except for about the price of the Buccaneer they could have owned the F-105. The advantage of the former was its multiple purposes one could configure an airframe. The F-105 wasn’t as easy to repurpose.

And the only real advantage of Mirage III waists R.530, which Germany couldn’t operate by treaty. F-8 made more sense for gun fights and heatseekers.

Because if we ever got to the point of dropping nukes, what was the point? The Americans might have fantasised about winning nuclear wars, but I suspect most Europeans shared the attitude of the Frenchman who said (unofficially) about the limited range of the Mirage IV, “Who cares if it doesn’t have the range to get back after dropping its bombs? What would there be to go home to?”.

The Soviets planned for multiple phases in a nuclear war, each in terms of several years.

The Luftwaffe wanted a ‘maid of all work’, a light weight, low cost, off the shelf, multi role aircraft. Basically they wanted the F-16 about 15 years before the F-16 even flew.

Or the Mirage 5. The Mirage 5 (not V) was a stripped down Mirage III with an extra pair of hard points for a2g. The Mirage 50 was a further development, the Mirage F.1 motor in a Mirage III. (Ironically, most Mirage 50’s were rebuilds of Mirage III airframes for existing customers.) The French adjusted to the market too little, too late. Mirage III wasn’t exactly earth shattering costly, but it never had the economy of scale of its American counterparts. The Americans for instance could sell the Douglas A-4 for much cheaper purchase and life-time costs. But at least dumbing down of the Mirage III allowed them to sell over five hundred aircraft that otherwise would have been sales elsewhere. I don’t think the Germans really were too interested in cooperating with the French in the 60’s from what I understood. Too many hard feelings left over from WW2.

Many of us liked the F-14, especially F-14D, but it’s gone. I’d been happy to see it gone if F/A-18E had been equipped with F110, too, like the F-14D. My only real criticism of Super Hornet has been its huge airframe running on too small of engines.

I would have been just as happy to retire F-14D if the USN had converted the F-15E to fly off the deck, too. It wasn’t so much that Tomcat was the top fighter, bar none. It was the fact that capability limitations begin with the engines. Give a fighter big enough engines and it will perform wonders.