so which of these aircraft actually have some use for an air force, or are both simply impractical for most modern air forces?
An Italian pilot once said, the AMX, costs as much as the F-16 with half the capabilities.
Hawk 200.. even worse?
The AMX performed decently over Kosovo and it kept Brazilian Reals in Brazil and helped develop Embraer’s capabilities but it, along with the L-159 and the Hawk 200, to have been a compromise of too many things into a single package, neither as heavy as tank killing ground-attack aircraft such as the A-10 or Su-25, not as light and nimble as turbo-prop COIN aircraft and unable to perform proper ‘fighter’ roles such air-to-air combat or air policing. It’s all theoretically capable of doing this things to a certain extent…. but other than ground attack, its not nearly good enough at anything of these duties to really justify the price tag. These 80-90s vintage ‘combat aircraft’ were all designed for a niche that never really existed and in the case of the Brazilians and Czechs, can probably be seen as a more of a government ‘make work’ project than anything else. Nowadays we are seeing a similar concept, light attack/advanced training aircraft which are also expensive but far more capable than these aircraft such as the KAI T-50, the Alenia Aermacchi M-346, Hongdu L-15 and Yak-130, will thse aircraft fall into the same mistakes these earlier aircraft fell into?
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