Jacko,
See your point... but do we really genuinely want to place all our eggs in the typhoon basket? Suppose Gulf War 10 starts around 2025, and we've just lost the last GRs, so we're left with typhoon + typhoon m....
Then someone discovers a horrific software fault and the fleet is grounded? Would it not be nice just to have a little warm fuzzy option 2? even if that does mean buying rafale? (would prefer gripen myself, but due to a lack of naval variant there, I'm on to a loser!)