From the newly announced news about the purchase of FA-50 by Poland, it has been revealed that the Polish version would be basesd on Block 20. Currently there are two upgraded variants of FA-50, one being the Block 10 and other being 20.
Block 10 is more of a modest imporvement of ground attack capabilities, signified by integration of Sniper ATP.
Block 20 on the other hand represents significant improvements on air-to-air capabilities, most notably the integration of a new AESA radar(yet to be determined if LIG wpuld be chosen or Hanwha. LIG's design is more advanced, although it lacks the commonality Hanwha's offer have to existing KF-21 radar) and AMRAAM. Block 20 has still not been realised due to added costs and more importantly lack of ROKAF interest.
It was previously rumored that the offer to Malaysia is based on Block 20, mainly due to the proposed program cost being noticably higher than previous export history. Now there are not much known about the Malaysian LWF program, apart from that with various military and economical offsets, India and their Tejas offer has claimed the high ground.
Polish are also planning to use their FA-50s as LIFTs, essentially the same way ROKAF utilises their TA-50. ROKAF have already seen extensive benefits of changes imposed on the training curriculum by the addition of TA-50, especially in terms of the operating costs and downtime of combat aircraft. More specifically, with TA-50 ROKAF was able to shorten CRT phase of KF-16 pilot training from 27 weeks of 48 sorties to just 8 weeks of 9 sorties, bulk of which now replaced by 21 weeks of LIFT training on TA-50, also reducing 3 weeks of total training time. Poland would be able to expect the same.
Arguably, Poland could achieve the same LIFT training benefits with M-346FA, since Italians are already using M-346 for that exact purpose alongside more modest M-345, but that would be a far less combat capable option.
en.yna.co.kr
