I agree on your comments about the MiGs but disagree on the SAAF example with the Mirages. Those Mirage III or Cheetahs were up-graded first and when the F1 would have been dues political needs had changed, so that they were dropped. (well apart from the fact that one could say that the Cheetahs were younger than the F1)

But then would it not make more sense to up-grade the F-16s and buy more F-35 faster, than to have such a small sub-fleet of limited worth.

Greek Phantoms

The obvious answer is to retire the F-15 C/D early to make money available for F-35. The F-15 C/D is too expensive for air-policing and to old as a first line air dominance fighter. If you retire the whole fleet for just one squadron of F-35 you actually gain more fighting power.

The most dangerous place on earth, was found between Western and Eastern Germany less than 4 decades ago.

From China, of course.

Sure.

Dream on. No government would survive shooting masses of NK civilians heading into the South. And they would rush south. Look up some footage from the fall of the Berlin wall and the first days the border was open. There was no stopping the flood heading West, but those people had a functioning government, jobs, food , but still they stormed West for bananas, oranges and TVs.

SK would be facing an exodus from the North and the only measures that could possibly stop it, would mean that SK would be facing a UN trade embargo very quickly.And that is the scenario if the North should collapse on its own. If they are defeated in battle you can add some remaining military resistance to the humanitarian crisis in a country whose limited infrastructure will have been destroyed by the fighting. A country who has practically no emergency would reserves that could cover some time and a country in which an Ak47 would be as common as in Irak after 2003.

You do not need to increase the power, you need to reduce the detection threshold. But in that area we are far from the technical limitation, data is just discarded because the currently in-service hardware lacks the processing power to handle all those tiny returns that are picked up.

Problem is whilst you can make a cheaper subsonic fighter jet it will struggle to perform particular key tasks required of it. The Czech found that out with the L159, OK it has a perfectly decent radar (albeit a small dish), cannon and a SRAAM but if it has to do the prosaic thing of intercepting a transiting Boeing 737-800 with a failed transponder at FL410 there is a good chance that you won’t actually get to it by the time it has excited your airspace or run into something! 😉 That is why there is still a market for jets like the CAC J-7, being able to go Supersonic is difference between getting to visual range on an intercept and missing all together. The Austrians eventually had to go for the Draken as other countries especially the US were taking the **** using their airspace as a short-cut. If the Austrians had purchased the jet you suggest there is a good chance that they wouldn’t of been able to get up and take photos of the culprits!

True, also such a fighter might be able to do M1.3 or something considering how close some biz jet can go to M1.0. Some mission profiles are not easy to do with a cheap airplane.