ECR-90 is 'significantly inferior' to the APG-63, really? How so?

-RP

To the OP -

The neutral answer is indeed "it depends". Best fighter for what? Fighter aircraft perform all kinds of missions. For instance, the Frogs designed the Rafale to do everything from carrier-based air defense to nuclear strike. The 'phoon was originally intended to operate alongside the Tornado so it was A2A-optimized.

Both are good at most things, however... but if you don't have the do-re-mi to acquire and operate them, there's JAS 39E.

APG 63 v3 is way, way ahead of Captor.

Not an equivalent comparison, APG-63(V)3 is an AESA, CAPTOR is a MSA, once CAPTOR-E is fielded by Typhoon operators then you can compare the two on a level(ish) playing field, until then, comparing the 3rd upgrade of an in service AESA with a standard MSA radar is not a fair comparison...

-RP

It's a fair comparison if you're comparing in service aircraft. Otherwise the Typhoon is no match for the Bing Aerospace 3000 with it's quantum spectrography sensor fit!

I think it’s a completely fair comparison if we are looking at current capabilities. Captor E is quite some way off.

Concur. You can have all the kinematic performance you want - but if your Air System is lacking in sensors and data links you have an inferior Air System. Period.

It is a very capable fighter, with an ever-improving air to surface capability. The dongs are the best out there, that for one thing cannot be argued...

Indeed. I’ve got a mate flying Super Hornets after an exchange here on FGR4. He misses the power and performance of the airframe but, outside of that, doesn’t think that Typhoon matches up.

Perhaps one of the biggest mistakes we made was going single seat?

"Perhaps one of the biggest mistakes we made was going single seat?"

Didn't the French do just that change from one to two crew for certain Rafale varients..

The reasons go wayyy back IIRC

In the early 1980's we were in need of a small, agile, fighter to replace the Lightning and to cover scenarios where the Tornado F2 would be ... embarrassed...... We had Tornado, Buccaneer, Jaguar and Harrier for strike at the time.The British went ahead with a technology demonstrator, the EAP.

This morphed into the EFA (Typhoon) in 1988. After the fall of the Soviet Union and German shenanigans the whole thing stalled for several years until production eventually went ahead in 1996. There was still a lot of pressure to keep the costs down. The choice of radars was a straight political deal between the UK & Germany to keep Ferranti in business.

First deliveries started in 2003.

It's not surprising that as the world has changed the Typhoon we see isn't what we'd spec today. The addition of a ground attack requirement was never really envisioned over 30 years ago. The design is basically over 25 years old and has been in serial production for 20 years.

That's why, in some roles, it's not exactly what we might want - but it's all we have and it could be a lot worse.......