Who'd have guessed that Saab and Boeing would be able to design and build a production ready, new, clean sheet of paper trainer design that met all the KPPs and requirements, and was able to beat the existing, fully amortised T-50 and M-346 on both price and costs.
And to do so by a handsome margin.
That's what digital model based design does for you.
Then you add truly modular and open architectures, so that you can port across existing mission systems, and can upgrade software and hardware in a truly agile manner, avoiding the obsolescence issues that already plague the F-35, for example.
And that's how a clean sheet of paper new design could be better AND cheaper than friend Gums'
"Block30 Viper with an AESA radar and new comm gear"
Asturias 56 said:
"Oh no - not that again......... every 20 years the USAF decides to build in volume off the drawing board and it never turns out well - a prototype is a good idea. The point is that "designing for production" is better than building it wrong to start with."
That's true of the old way of doing things, it's plainly less true today.
As soon as you start thinking that tinkering with F-16s is the answer, you're just demonstrating that you don't 'get it'.