it is like Msphere said, lots of places kept the F1s in service for a long time, but they were used in other roles.

This whole thread is nothing but Y-20 trying to claim that the F-1 is obsolete as a modern fighter which its not. If the F-1 were put into production now it would probably sell very well because if you make the comparisons, the F-1’s climb rate, rate of turn are all pretty decent considering its has a turbojet engine. Its certainly as good or better than any of the fighters that China is exporting. This idea that the F-1 is no longer used in A2A by its current users is just something invented out of Y-20’s head to support his infatuation over 5th gen FBW fighters. Citing unsubstantiated kills by the F-14 the Iran/Iraq war as proof shows how childish and desperate Y-20 is to make his point.

It looks like the USAF may be buying this: http://www.businessinsider.com/air-force-may-buy-this-cheap-jet-2016-7?yptr=yahoo?r=UK&IR=T

http://sploid.gizmodo.com/the-designer-of-the-f-16-explains-why-the-f-35-is-such-1591828468

I think the Swedes are really big on dispersing fighter operation off improvised roads, they don’t even bother to clear the snow off roadways to operate off them. The idea is that you only randomly station aircraft in these outer bases when you need them out there.

For a long range interceptor mission that actually can intercept something, eighter an F-15 variant or EF comes to mind.

or…..

[ATTACH=CONFIG]244804[/ATTACH]

The P-51 totally deserves its hype, it was best of class high altitude late-war fighter. The russian Yak’s and La’s might have been the best low level fighters, but that was a different kind of war. The P-51 had an airfoil built for high speed and high altitude and was a lead-in to the jet age. It was a very heavy durable fighter, not something the overweight Me-109s would ever want to come up against. Hot pilots in the P-51 would purposely leave fuel in the rear fuselage tank to give the P-51 extreme AoA yawing ability, but this is something that was never needed for the kind of fighting it would do.

This whole thing is stupid, the Canadians should have bought F-16s or F-15s in the first place, now 35 years later they figured out their F-18s lack range so they want to replace them with F-16s, F-15s, or even more silly….more F-18’s. And you can’t tell me these F-18s have reached their service life because the USAF has F-15s that are older, have much more hours on the airframes, have been flown harder and are still in service and being upgraded for many more years in service. Where as Canadian F-18s don’t even all get used but are rotated through time in storage. And then you have eurocanards which are horribly expensive for no significant improvement, in fact the F-18 has a better thrust to weight ratio than the eurocanards. But if they want to spend money needlessly and get rid of perfectly fine fighters, well, why not.

The two main factors for the decline of the world wide aviation industry are:

– The advance of technology has reached its end. In the 80s military aircraft technology reached its peak. In the 90s the advance of airline aircraft technology hit a technological end. There is no longer incentive for manufacturers to design new aircraft because there will be no perceptible improvement over previous models. So airlines don’t replace their aircraft for newer technology but just keep flying the same aircraft till end of service. Only the light/private aircraft market is still thriving.

– There is no longer any competition in the military sector. The US and European governments used to have many different models of aircraft of the same type in service at the same time. Starting in the 80s governments would only award one contract for each type of aircraft. This created a winner-take-all market that killed off competition and innovation in the defense industry forcing may contractors to go out of business. There is effectively only one aviation defense contractor in existence now in Britain, there are only two in the US. This has caused the prices of aircraft to skyrocket because the contractors have no competition so they can name any price and have every incentive to drag out development time and create cost overruns. As an example, the planning for the Eurofighter started in 1980, the contract was awarded in 1983, the first flight wasn’t till 1994, production didn’t start till 2003. This also has killed the export market, developing and third would nations can no longer afford to buy new hardware.