You failed to explain how the Draken is more versatile than the F-104. Versatile does not mean ‘maneuverable’…in our context, it means having more uses. Are you prepared to defend the opinion that a Draken has a greater number of uses than a F-104?

Please explain how the F-5 is “far superior” to the F-104 in “maneuver and load carrying”.

Comparing fighters is kind of a fun game because there is no absolutes, designers go to opposite extremes and still come out with solutions that match fighters at other extremes. I think most people would agree that the F-104 concept of relying on a small wing and powerful engine did not work. Its a fighter that cannot maneuver or carry a decent load for its size. The fact that a fighter like the F-5 can perform better in every regard with engines a small fraction of the size would show that the F-104 is buying you nothing but speed, and false speed at that as it was shown that these small wings do not give untouchable low level speed but rather are easy meat for subsonic fighters like the mig-15 as shown in Vietnam. The F-104 was overwhelmingly bad in every respect and sold well as it was the only major mach 2 fighter sold at the time

The F-86 had a ranging radar assisted gun-sight coupled with weapons of higher firing speed. All that gives a greater hit propability from the start and is not debatable. 😉

The radar ranging gunsight was worthless and ignored by pilots who instead used the “gum sight”, a piece of gum stuck to the inside of the windscreen to serve as a target redicule.

You’ve completely misread what TooCool said, & turned it round.

whoops, my mistake, I mis-read mig-15 for F-86, sorry, my brain has been sort of burned out lately

So you have no problem to bolster your claim about the Draken with some data about inst/sust turning capability for some height and speed values for the benefit of all readers.

All I can tell you is that the engine intakes served as wing area and provided turning leverage forward of the CoL, which among other things, allowed it to pull off the cobra maneuver.Im not trying to make it out as a wonderfighter, Im sure it bled a lot of speed in a turn. But Im sure its sustained turn rate was much better than the Mirage3/5, although I have no hard data on that.

You maintain that the Draken was a more versatile aircraft than the F-104.

In what ways?

The Draken is extremely maneuverable (A0A-wise) for a non-FBW delta wing fighter, whereas most other tailless deltas like the Mirage3/5 just bleed airspeed in a turn. Its a night and day comparison to the F-104 which does nothing but go fast. Even an F-5 is a far superior fighter to the F-104 in maneuver and load carrying.

Yeah … when they get them all, one hell of an Airforce with the whole 154 F-15S/SA( old ones to be modernized), the (87?) Tornado IDS GR4-like, and the at least 72 Typhoons.:rolleyes:

I read in the news that Saudi Arabia is going on a huge military spending spree to expand the size of it military to become a regional power that will counter any threat by Iran and fill the void left by Iraq. We could see the Saudi AF becoming much larger than what current acquisitions would indicate

The F-104 should never have entered service, it was designed in the early 50s in response to the F-86 being inferior to the mig-15 in the Korean war. Im sure the tiny wing/large engine concept seemed like a great idea at the time, but as it turned out speed, engine power and missiles did not make dogfighting obsolete and the vietnam war proved that the concept did not work as F-4s, F-104s and F-105s were all humbled by the more maneuverable mig-15, mig-17 and mig-19. The F-104 was extremely aggressively marketed (forced down the throat of allies) so that superior options like the F-8 and Grumman Tiger did not sell like they should have.

The Draken was very far ahead of its time with AoA capability unlike any other non-FBW fighter of its time. The Viggen followed the layout of high thrust to weight ratio coupled with large wing area which in the 60s gave it capability similar to that of 4th gen fighters like the F-16. It was slightly stiff, but had acceptable turning rate. Close in the Draken would have the edge.

Not “roughly equivalent to the Gripen” at all. T-50 is a trainer with a light attack version, & a fighter version under development. The EL/M-2032 radar (still being integrated, last I read) of the light fighter version may be equivalent in quality to the PS-05 of Gripen C/D, but is smaller & less powerful in the version fitted. Also, it’s Israeli. Would Malaysia want an Israeli radar? If not, it’d either have to put up with the APG-67v4, or wait for something better to be integrated. Even the fighter version lacks some of the other systems of the Gripen. With a slightly less powerful engine & similar T/W ratio, T-50 is significantly slower than the Gripen A/B/C/D.

OK, so the Gripen does have better systems, that does not make it worth double the price. American equipment could be fitted. And as for being significantly slower, being mach 2 capable is pretty irrelevant nowadays. Mach 1.6 is a reasonable top speed for a lot of 4th gen fighters.

What relevance does “companies like Naza do business in Korea” have? Many Malaysian companies do business in the UK, Germany, France, the USA, etc.

oh of course, Malaysia does business with europe and the US, what relevance would there be for them to do any business with Korea, what was I thinking

Malaysia is not going to buy enough of any type for it to make sense to build it under licence.

I think Malaysia has only about 50 fighters in their inventory, they are mostly expensive fighters. A cheaper fighter could open the way for a larger purchase

In my opinion one of the best platforms suited for CAS would be upgraded skyhawks, with a simple non afterburning version of the F404 or 414? to reduce cost and complexity. And it’s even carrier capable

If you look at the specs of the Skyhawk, they are exactly identical to the AMX. The advantage of the AMX is that it has a radome in the nose whereas the Skyhawk is not able to carry anything in its nose but rather on a hump on its back.

But in my opinion, the F-5 is the best bet for an old fighter to put back into production. Its still used as a front line fighter by first rate airforces all over the world (Korea, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, etc). And it has pretty decent load carrying ability. The cost of fighters is too high for most governments to justify buying, even a K-8 trainer costs $10 million USD. It really surprises me no one has built this fighter under license. The other fighter that has a good shot at being made again is the Jaguar, I wonder if it would be possible for India to build and sell them.