The US has done this before, they had a winner with the F5E/F-20 Tigershark back in the day, they could have sold those to everyone but they killed the program

The US has done this before, they had a winner with the F5E/F-20 Tigershark back in the day, they could have sold those to everyone but they killed the program to boost F16 sales. It was cheap to buy, cheap to run (like really cheap for the capability which in the case of the F20 matched F16’s of the era) but because the USAF didn’t want to buy them it got cut off at the knees. Damn thing has a thrust to weight ratio of 1.16 to 1 (it could accelerate in a vertical climb) and do Mach 2, largely because they shoved a single F18 engine in to replace the two much older engines the F5 had.