No need to get so upset dude.

Leclerc hasn’t sold in recent times. M1s, second hand Leo 2s and T-80s have.

Not sure if the French are actively pursuing Leclerc sales – I know they were offering to Saudi Arabia recently. Anyhow in it’s history Leclerc has obtained a single export order (UAE).

Oh and K2 beat Leclerc in Turkey (as well as Leo 2).

As for K2, last I heard it has massive transmission problems and is way over budget. Transmissions are one of the most important components of a tank.

Not sure if transmission problems have been rectified – I heard a while back something about replacing indigenous components with German ones. Has this happened.

And so what if it use Leclerc dervied autoloader – it also uses German gun used on Leo 2 and M1 Abrams.

Not sure what all the angst is about.

It was always clear if budget was increased or required number of airframes reduced/made more flexible, F-35 would get first prize.

Militaries around the world are going as far as to gut their capabilities to get F-35s so why not South Korea?

And if you allowed F-35 to compete in Middle East (other than Israel), you’d be seeing them brought in droves by Saudi Arabia and Persian Gulf states. Which means zero sales for Typhoon and Rafale in that region. Lucky for Dassault and Airbus that the Jewish lobby has such strong influence in Washington.

The only problem is F-35 is only replacing F-4Es (currently 1 operational wing of about 60+ aircraft).

F-5 is being replaced by F/A-50.

F/A-50 might be fine for swatting barely operational North Korean MiG-21s but not for pretending to be a player in the Asia Pacific which is a stated South Korean objective (blue water navy, amphibs, long range strike).

As it stands South Korean fleet will looks as follows by 2020-25:

60 FX-3 (most likely F-35)
60 F-15K (assumes no attrition)
168 F-16C/D-30/52 (assumes no attrition)
100+ F/A-50

I’m not sold on F/A-50 as anything but an air policing jet.

As for KF-X, I’m not sold on that being delivered quickly either or even close to on budget – look at Turkish estimates of $33 billion for developing and producing up to 200 jets.

Since Leclerc came on the market, new Leopard 2s have been sold to Sweden, Spain & Greece. Three countries may be relatively a lot more than one, but in absolute terms it’s not a big deal. Total exports of new Leopard 2 since the end of the Cold War are 398, vs 388 Leclerc. Hardly a big difference, is it?

The greater number of Leopard 2 users is due mostly to the large number sold secondhand by Germany & the Netherlands since the end of the Cold War. There were no Cold War surplus stocks of Leclercs to sell, because it came onto the market too late.

Second hand Leo2 did gut the tank market. However it’d be interesting to see how many export sales the Leclerc and Leo2 (as well as M1) would have had if Cold War continued.

Frankly I don’t think Leclerc would’ve been much of a seller just like Mirage 2000 wasn’t much of a seller to the NATO/Asian crowd. Also AMX-30 didn’t sell much compared to Leopard I or M60.

How many Serb radars had to shut down suddenly? Air defences can be suppressed without being destroyed.

Note that newer weapons aren’t fooled by a radar shutting down. They can still find it.

Mind you all this assumes idiots operating junk with 1960s approach to electronic warfare.

We have no idea what the latest Russian, Chinese (or American) IADS systems really do and we have no combat data to evaluate it on. That kind of info is super top secret.

If facing air opposition above the turboprop level, A-10 requires fighter cover. F-16 (Rafale, F-15, F-18, Typhoon, Gripen, etc) doesn’t. It can do the whole job. One must consider the overall operating cost to achieve an effect, not just the A-10 cost. Ditto sortie rates. Why send A-10 and F-16, when the F-16 can do it alone?

The F-16/Typhoon/Gripen) whatever can’t do it alone. It still needs an escort.

Why?

The reason is simple:

1. F-16 is called in on a CAS sortie to stop enemy troops overrunning a friendly position.

2. It is engaged by enemy fighters or IADS.

3. F-16 neutralises threat (and gets to paint a nice enemy roundel under its canopy as a kill marking).

4. HOWEVER time taken to take out the radar or enemy fighter means it’s quite possibly too late for the CAS mission to be effective and your friendlies have been overrun. That’s an epic failure.

Or

3a. F-16 has to jettison A2G munitions to minimalise weight in A2A engagement
3b. F-16 uses up too much fuel and needs to refuel and time lost means CAS is not successful.

That one lone example of two F/A-18s taking out 2 MiG-21s and then doing a bombing run has clouded people’s minds (and that was an interdiction mission and not a CAS sortie).

And even getting delayed on an interdiction sorties can result in mission failure – e.g. target moves/evacuates, mission aborted due to fuel etc or the delay allows enemy to pile up defences.

Despite F-16 and F/A-18 being super multi-role awesome sauce, standard operating procedures means that the USAF (and IDF/AF) provides fighter cover because it’s the common sense thing to do and they don’t rely on manufacturer propaghanda of “can do everything in one mission”.

Super multi-role awesome sauce still doesn’t mean laws of physics, time and geography don’t affect you.