Originally Posted by KAG
Ok so basically what you are saying is that in reality the Rafale radar is better then"
No, I'm not. JFZ is correct when he says "all other things being equal, bigger is better"; the problem is that they generally aren't equal. Engineering is about tradeoffs and optimizations - you might find that each outperforms the other under certain circumstances, it isn't as black-and-white as "k3wl b1g radar pwns ur feeble fanboi e4t"
For instance; I would be very surprised if Rafale outperforms Typhoon when the aircraft "definitely isn't pointing at the target" (avoiding all mention of actual angles), because that's a known limitation of fixed single-array AESA. Typhoon currently has a mechanically-scanned antenna that can point its full effort in a single direction, and the trialled Typhoon AESA has a mounting that lets it angle the array to mitigate this.
Having worked on the design side of Blue Vixen and CAPTOR (ECR-90 as it was then), I was rather proud of what we produced; but that was over a decade ago, and I genuinely have no idea how well or badly RBE2 performs compared to CAPTOR. I also haven't got a clue about how well RBE2-AA works, or how it compares to CAESAR.
If the CAESAR production contract goes ahead, I would be surprised if the T/R element technology isn't as least as good as (if not better than) the RBE2-AA T/R elements, simply due to Moore's law - if you go to design freeze two years later, you get two years improvements in process technology.