Well there has been some complete horse!!!! written on this one - I suspect lots of the anti stuff by people that have never had any contact with the jet. It was a most capable platform which went on to become a superb test bed for lots of the 'new' kit...HMS, IDM, AMLCD etc etc. Considering the French input it was remarkably simple to work on with some highly reliable systems.
This was initially designed and built as a fast jet trainer ac - which went on to become one of the RAFs most 'loved' by those of us lucky enough to work with it.