Tarnished - not knocking Typhoon - think its a fantastic aircraft, and a world beater. I dont subscribe to the 20 years out-of-date arguement at all!
It just strikes me as crazy that a weapon that was designed INTO the aircraft, and works, and at least provides some last line of defence / attack, or some form of attacking low value targets, is being used as purely as ballast. The arguments used to justify its status just seem nonsense to me! I accept what you are saying, but if we wanted a missile platform, why didn't we just buy one?
I'm asking this out of ignorance, but when was the air-ground requirement / swing role specified for Typhoon?
I wasn't serious with my Tornado suggestion, but effectively thats what they are saying we need with that argument - NOT an expensive agile fighter, but a missile platform.