All points made are fair, but this is why I raised point 2. Recall that John Boyd, in "saving" the F-15 and in laying out the specs for the F-16 used a very different design brief; a specialized one.
No, the guy writing the article isn't a designer. In some ways, I'm trolling G Scholz here, for he best articulated the design brief for the F-35 using what I dubbed the logic of the horde. In it, we posit that, all other things being equal, the nation that uses its budget to build a fleet of multi role aircraft will win.
Of course, John Boyd was at the other end of that continuum of thinking. Indeed, the base assumption is flawed - all other things are not equal.
I'd add, the design brief that produced the f-16 was pretty specialized and, at least in its early production guises F-16c was reasonably priced, as far as it goes in that market.
In any case, I think we've seen the results of the f-35 design brief repeated too many times; F-111, and the whole century series were fatally compromised for a pure a2a role.
The question isn't so much one of can it be done. We know what a pure a2a brief produced in the pre-stealth generation. The real question is, what would the old lightweight fighter formula produce in THIS era, and is it likely to be worthwhile?
Thoughts, and I recognize we're all speculating, as was the author?
