I am sure there has been extensive feasibility works on upgrading the T1 to something more useful by RAF
UK military procurement for the last 40-50 years is always 70% budget cuts and 30% capability increase while lowering numbers. It's the remnant of an empire still trying to find its place in the world. It's the same reason why they almost couldn't send a full carrier group to Falklands in 1982 and had to push Hermes' retirement. Ships that would replace UK's older larger carriers were Invincible Class ships, light carriers whose main arm was not the Harriers but its ASW helicopters. Similar thing happened with the retirement of Invincibles and Harriers, and Royal Navy operated without a carrier for more than a decade. That's why they are also retiring their C-130Js in less than 30 years to replace them with A400s. British Army can hardly deploy a single division currently, and air force is at its lowest number of aircraft since 1910s. Wages are sky high, not enough people sign up to the armed forces and they see no real existing threats, so army continues to shrink. Didn't change much after 2022 either.
T1s could be upgraded. 2 reasons exist to why they aren't. 1: 3 countries(UK, Germany, Italy) decided it would be a better to keep the production lines of EF-2000 open by ordering more aircraft, as at the time they were having issues finding customers. Spanish followed suit. That's why if I'm remembering right all T1s are stuck at Block 5. They simply ordered more aircraft by choosing to either keep the T1s as is or by retiring them in the case of UK. 2: They believed upgrading the 130 or so T1s in various configurations in service with 5 countries(UK, Germany, Italy, Spain, Austria) would simply cost a lot.
British decided to retire their T1s early to cut costs to sell the F-35s to the air force and to keep their production line open by ordering more.
T1 Block 5s to my knowledge are not armed with Meteors. But they will be dirt cheap as Brits will either put them into storage or give them to us if the news is to be believed.
Some number of T1s, maybe majority of them in dual seating versions, could be a nice quick way to train the pilots with a joint squadron. Maybe they are not bought but rented for a few years with an option to buy them later on, weirder things did happen in the past.
I don't think upgrading them to an EF-2000T would be cost effective per se, but this should be thought on. Maybe a smaller upgrade package to bring them to T2 Block 15 level with AIM-120Cs and Meteors, maybe Göktuğ missiles in our own program. BAE did claim in the past this was doable, but British MoD rejected it, instead deciding to retire it.
My understanding is that TurAF is not really enthusiastic about it either.
From what's available on open sources, Turkish pilots that flew against them recently in Qatar and Pakistan in exercises loved them. Loved as in, EF-2000s scrubbed the floor with our F-16s. TurAF is bleeding for jets. Can't get F-35s, can't get Rafales, only option remains is the Typhoon, and it is a damn good jet. I think they saw that they were very behind now capability wise and they are pushing for new aircraft.
If this is true its big bs,the T1 brings nothing new to the table.
EF-2000 is heaps and bounds more capable than anything we have available right now, even in T1. I think it makes sense to get some T1s for combat training. And after they are done with majority of pilot training, they can be relegated to combat roles as well. At it's worst, T1 is a rate of climb monster that can scramble in a minute and be at 35k 2 minutes after that with mach 2 with 4 AIM-120s and 2 AIM-9s. With smart use of resources, it could be used as a nice air superiority/interceptor aircraft with 2 1000 tanks and 6 missiles to counter Greek Rafales and Iranian Su-35s at high altitude.
