In the eighties the Viper was a AIM-9L, MK82, Maverick day only fighter. Both the Sparrow capable F-16 ADF and the Block 40 “Night Falcon” were delivered in the late 89 and IOC”ed” in 1990, so they are out.
Both the Mirage 2000C equiped with the RDI and the F/A-18C had a more robust avionics suite and a true BVR capability.

Hmmm…AIUI, block 25 Vipers also have, in theory, Sparrow capability – they just didn’t have the software? Or something. But it’s true that for practical purposes there were no Sparrow equipped F-16’s in service during the ’80s though they could have been easily made if it had been a priority.
F-18C IOC was late 1989 so IMO it’s disqualified if F-15E is also not accepted.

Never thought comparing any aircraft in the 60’s and 70’s to the scooter would be a knock. Speaking of which…. The A-4 got no mention for the 60’s or 70’s. A capable light attack aircraft that could provide a reasonable air defense capability (and did for the Aussies on their carrier , Argentinian A-4’s weren’t armed with AAM, I think). Brazil was using them for air defense on their carrier until it’s decommissioning.

No Skyhawk is a really great aircraft, but since the threads are about selecting only one type of aircraft which has to do all missions, it kinda shuts down many options. Imagine you’re say, Israel and told that you need to select one type to meet all the threats. Odds are that Skyhawk won’t make the cut…

Change in leadership. Money talks. I still think the Soviets had a lot more on the F-14 than the West realized. The Soviets were/are great at spying. Within a couple of years of the revolution, the MiG-31 was VVS entering service. No way the Russians turned that kind of technology around in two years. The tech the Russians acquired from the West and inspired by the F-14 went into the MiG-31. Along with some powerful engines.

Powerful engines…from F-14?

You described the Hunter as an over-large and inefficient airframe design. A comparison with its contemporaries would show that that is not the case. You have yet to prove otherwise.

I’m not sure what more I could do: if we compare Hunter to its contemporaries and peers like Mystere IV and Mig-17: Hunter was the largest, with shortest range and performance only average within that group. Hard to characterize it anything else than a very conservative design.
Sure thing, not necessarily bad design, as exemplifed by more adventurous and higher performance designs like Gnat and MiG-19 having much problems in service and generally shorter careers.

The Hunter was 2 or 3 tonnes lighter than the F-100, almost the same weight as the Super Mystere and about a tonne heavier than the MiG-19. I’m pretty sure it was efficient enough.

Super Sabre was half a generation newer than Hunter, true supersonic fighter. MiG-17 was 2 tons lighter than Hunter. Gnat, of course, weighted only 1/3 of Hunter, but that lightness came in expense of usefulness.
None of that obviously means that Hunter was a bad aircraft, obviously its track record is excellent.

Gnat was nightmare to maintain. All the equipment and structures were very tightly packed in tiny airframe, everything was hard to reach, required squeezing one’s hands into very crampled places inside the aircraft (especially unfun in wintertime). Also there were lots of teething problems with subsystems as the aircraft was very much untested. Accident rate was high. Finns bought the license for Gnat but it went unused.

Indian experience was much of the same, really. This is why they built Ajeet but it came so late that it was already meaningless in fighter duties.
But it’s true that when the Gnat worked and nothing broke down and it didn’t run out of fuel, it was great and capable of whipping pretty much any contemporary fighter in a curve fight. I mean, jet fighter with empty weight less than Spitfire V: it’s pretty awesome concept when you think about it. Even Fiat G.91 which was specificially designed to be as small and cheap as possible was 50% heavier.

Problem with MiG-21 is same than F-4 – the versions you really want only came available at very end of decade. Before that we are limited to F- and PF-models, former which is radarless day fighter, latter has radar but no gun. If we are limited to only one fighter type, I would probably want something bit more flexible, like Mirage, Draken or Crusader. Heck, even Super Tiger if one can afford it…