Yeah, new built A-10s is something I always thought about. Reomove the huge gun and add 2 27 Mauser 27mm instead. use the space for an internal targeting pod. Re-engine with modern bizjet engines.

As already said the main difference were the pilots. The British Lightnings were the largest air-to-air only flying club in Western Germany at the time. All others (apart from US F-102 and later F-15As) had secondary ground attack roles to fulfil. The Lightning kockies did play air-to-air every day and bounced countless NATO fighters and fighter bombers around Gütersloh and as far South as the big dams in the Sauerland. That was Lightning country, the knew every twist and every hill. When the fight was WVR only they had another advantage. Due to the old radar they were used to fly low-level and loo-up for targets, so they usually avoided detection in the ground clutter and used their famous climb to climb up for a nice tail attack on the enemy.

Where would you find so many Mk2k-9s ?

The production line is closed. Not so many second hand examples around either.

Stealth is more useful for AG attacks, as an aircraft could do those without emitting any signals the enemy could pick up. The F-117 is the typical role model for that. Apart from the laser beam, it is more or less free of any emissions.

In the AA role you need a very strong C3 capability and datalinks to allow emission free targeting. In most cases the stealth fighter will have to use its radar, which anounces its presence, even it is is an AESA radar. That does not mean it can be targeted though.

In the end stealth is always a huge advantage.

It clearly depends on what you are talking about. Government specified and funded military programs are often over engineered. Because they end up with a “one size fits all and does everything” solution.
In the commercial sector however, European designs are doing quite well and there have been ni complaints. Be it Airbuses or Eurocopter and Augusta helicopters. They are giving the competition a run for the money. But other countries are not better. Look at the recent US helicopter programs. Simple specified and commercial available Lakota goes well, military specified ARH not.
More interestingly countries which are famous for theur robust military products are having a hard time in the commercial sector.

You can´t compare EF with F-35 or F-22 as the design has to fulfil different criteria. The American jest were designed to enter a highly protected airspace and fight there. The EF (and Rafale) where designed to stay over friendly airspace and shoot down enemy planes approaching that airspace.

While ground attack was an important mission the European designers went for the carriage of stand-off weapons, instead of designing an airframe that is able to deliver cheaper munition from inside the enemy defences.

Pak-FA und J-XX however seem to follow the american design and will render the european fighters obsolete, as Pak-FA and J-XX will be able to defeat the euro canards in the airspace they are designed to protect.

That depends on the version. Early export versions where a bitch. Hard to fly and maintain, while having not better weapons ir radar then MiG-21 of the same generation. R-23s were a bitch and next to useless, while R-60k was up to AIM-9L in most parameters.

Apart from that, in the early version the pilot had to select the angle of the wings, which was quite challenging and you could quickly and easily damage the plane in a dogfight by changing the wings position too late.

MiG was never really tested and when the money was available SU dominated the business in Russia. It sure haf potential. How much, we will never know.

SU-37 was a rechnology demonstrator. It was designed to test a FSW configuration. It is reasonable to beleive that Russia came to the same conclusion as other countries, that the drawbacks are not worth the effort for an operational fighter plane.