Had Eurofighter listened to the French, the RAF's current combat aircraft would be called the Squall FGR1 and built almost entirely in France, with French engines and French avionics. We'd have an aircraft which'd be able to fly off aircraft carriers we don't have too
Small talk.
Fact is that we have spend a substantial part of our ongoing defence budget on a useless, inflexible air-defence aircraft, when the budget should have gone to the army and to RAF SH, AAR, and Air Transport.
The French only got it mildly less wrong. At least they spent most of their budget on an adaptable air-defence/CAS/Carrier aircraft, even though their global priorities were less ambitious than ours, and even though their priorities should also have been expeditionary.
We have wasted several generations of defence budgets, not to mention many young lives, on the utter folly that is Typhoon.
The politicians of the early nineties are to blame for our current equipment imbalance. They had to rely on recommendations from the military chiefs of the time for advice. Unfortunately RAF advice won.