When designing the AMCA, I am sure the engineers designed the aircraft around the internal bay, and not the other way around. Basically you should design and build around the bay. You may design the aircraft's fuselage first and later go to design the internal bay only to find out that the bay won't be spacious enough or you may run into some other issues.
Right now, we are sure that the AMCA Mk-1 will be able to carry 4 AAM. So no discussion about the internal loadout of Mk-1. We are focusing on Mk-2.
How can a payload of 6 AAM in the Mk-2 come into the picture from the former Mk-1's 4 AAM loadout?
1. We make a miniaturised version of the Astra which will have nearly the same range as the baseline one. I am advocating something in the lines of what was done with the Brahmos NG. What is Brahmos NG? NG stands for next generation and Brahmos NG is a scaled down version of baseline brahmos but while it's scaled down, it will still have the same speed and range as baseline brahmos.
Read this excerpt from an article (I will provide link)
"The BrahMos-NG (Next Generation) will be a scaled-down variant of the current BrahMos missile. Compared to the present BrahMos, it is anticipated to be 50% lighter, three meters smaller, and have the same 290-kilometer range and Mach 3.5 speed."
In what could come as a significant boost to India’s next-generation cruise missile capability, flight testing of BrahMos-NG Indo-Russian cruise missile is expected to start before the end of 2025. BrahMos Export Director Pravin Pathak revealed this at the ongoing World Defense Show, which ends...
www.eurasiantimes.com
So I don't see why we cannot do the same with the Astra BVRAAM. We can make an Astra NG, basically a miniaturised version of the baseline Astra which will be smaller, lighter but will have the same speed and range as the original Astra.
2. We make the Bays more bigger in width, depth and length (overall size). I think the size of bay may become so large that the Airframe may have to undergo a size change. I think the basic design may be retained but the size will be increased. I mean a bigger Airframe can obviously field a larger bay. Basically what I think the AMCA MK-2 will be is basically it will have the same design as mk-1 albeit a bit larger. I can give you an example.
McDonnell Douglas F/A-18 Hornet and the Boeing F/A-18E/F Super Hornet. This may help us to determine what the AMCA MK-2 will look like.
Super Hornet: It's basically an evolution of the original F/A-18 produced by the US for its military and allies to which it has been exported.
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The SH brought upon several improvements and basically it's better than the baseline Hornet in every way that you can think of. Endurance, payload capacity, avionics, range etc. Sometimes bigger is always better.
This is what I think the AMCA Mk-2 will be. We will do with the AMCA MK-2 what the designers of F/A-18 SH did, basically enlarge. So AMCA Mk-2 will look visually identical to Mk-1 but it will be larger to facilitate a larger bay which in turn will facilitate more Weopons, better avionics, range etc. I think size should be increased and not try and pack each and everything in the same airframe, it will be prove to be counter productive.
3. Like originally said by many members here and even by you, we can Astra with foldable fins.
4. We can do all of the above and it will be better to do all of the above.