Tim
Who are these "British Aerospace" people you refer to? Last time I looked both Typhoon and the JSF consortium featured British input from some multinational defence company called BAE Systems. Perhaps thats why your view on their products seems to be so very 20th century.
Rafale is indeed a smart machine, but really needs to get an LDP fitted to save the embarrasment of a SEM buddy lase/ self generate coords for AASM.