Salute!
Make no mistake, from this old fighter pilot, there is a niche for something between the A-10 and the F-35. As of now, the Viper and maybe the Mudhen fill the gap.
If a country is willing to spend the $$$ or pounds or rubles or....., and start from scratch and then field the critter in 6 or 7 years, minimum, I say go for it. OTOH,
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.
The F-16 had a multiplex bus avionics design that put the F-14, F-15, A-10, F-4, F-111 and F-18 to shame. If your weapon or gizmo could talk on the 1553 bus following the NATO protocol for 1760 wepons and basic mux bus protocol, then you could plug stuff in day and night. The other ones I mentioned required dedicated boxes and unique electrical and "logical" (read "computer") interfaces that required hardware and several systems' software modifications. Go see how the F-18 launched a HARM or Harpoon. The Viper got the Slammer first due to its "open" archecture all the way back to late 70's. The Norwegian Penguin required a fire control computer and maybe some SMS code, but the thing basically plugged in on a store station. The HARM was best designed and implemented for the F-18, and required special boxes in the plane. DItto for the Harpoon. As my job was to integrate new wepons on old planes and old weapons on new planes, I speak from experience in these matters.
So I don't buy the cosmic computer model design stuff as panacea. Sure, helps in the mechanical form, fit, function, but what I saw was software failures in basic design and system design that could not be corrected sitting in front of a screen and "tinkering" with this module or the other. Further, the sfwe folks fought ADA and other efforts/standards that alowed straightforward plug and play because they had their "special" code or interface and did not like the "standard" demanded by several NATO and U.S. application standards.
A good original design that considers downstream requirements is not all that hard if you have both good systems engineers, armament system gurus and demand the software folks get away from the keyboards and quit "hacking".
/rant off
..Gums...