Tank131
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I think it could with the correct engine, avionics, and a fully digital fbw system amongst other minor modifications. But the question is how much all that would cost to the project, what does that do to the unit costs and would it be worth it when there are numerous off the shelf solutions from friendly countries? I think the time of K-8s exports is likely at an end when you have so many newer and established trainers out there. At the time of its develolment you only had a handful of advanced trainers and they were either politically difficult to deal with countries (US, Russia, UK, France) and were too expensive and advanced fornwhat many nations operated. The most advances airforces to use K-8 were PAF, PLAAF, EAF (egypt). But the current K-8s no longer fit the bill and an upgraded one may be expensive enough to put itnin in the simialr range as Yak-130/M346, Alphajet, Hawk. L-159 and frankly the chinese may not ve interested with them already producing JL-9 and L-15.
For Pakistan it may be worth developing an upgraded version and marketing it independently. It would make for a good challenge for PAC along with Azm which is under development (it is a good R&D project which would help to build capacity of the organization), but may not be worth the cost. Beyond that, i see Pakistan being able to use its need for a more advanced trainer as leverage for other weapons systems it may also desire (like getting M346 as part of a package which includes CAMM-ER and possibly an avionics and weapons package for JF-17 Blk 3 so they may want tonmove on as well). Besides i forsee them using it as a basic jet trainer in place of tweets. All of this is to me a bit disappointing as i really love this aircraft. It just seems like the littke jet that could.
