N Joe - the majority of US/NATO air-air victories over the past 15 years have been with BVR weapons systems; IIRC, all NATO kills over Kosovo in '99 were with AMRAAM. Afghanistan and Iraq didn't see air-air fighting, for obvious reasons. However, it would be foolish in the extreme for any air force to give up its BVR capability, since one could argue that the two current conflicts are the exception rather than the rule.
I can't buy the idea that Typhoon pilots should be forced to go up against adversaries equipped with R-77 armed Su-27s - which is not an impossibility. Although the details are sketchy, it would appear that the Ethiopian-Eritrean war saw the majority of air-air kills being scored with BVR weapons (albeit the R-27). BVR weapons have proliferated since the end of the Cold War, and to base assumptions on the requirement upon the fact that neither Iraq nor Afghanistan have seen air-air combat since 2001 would be foolish in the extreme.