marvellous pics

You don’t win wars by avoiding the enemy. You go and challenge him, seek him out. But as I said, it’s a question of doctrines. And I didn’t say stealth dosn’t make sense, I only said, I don’t think it is priority for a fighter.
And answer me this: When was the last time a jet fighter group did “freie Jagd” as outlined by Richthofen? I’ll give a hint – a conflict in a certain Asian country 1951-53. Even Israel in the battles over Bekaa valley never had more than a single four-ship formation on the fringes of enemy airspace. All other air battles, be it Vietnam, be in Yom Kippur, or Iran vs. Iraq developed from escort or CAP missions. And “most fighter” were shot down WVR, the BVR kills that are the supposed sphere of activity for the F-22 are in the single digit percentages.
You are right in saying that a F-22 in a dogfight did something wrong, but the current USAF rules of engagement basically still rule out BVR shoots – what good is a stealthfighter if you have to do a visual ID first? The F-22 will still need substantial AWACS support.
Btw, the future SEAD mission is for UAVs.

You win wars by shooting down your enemies airforce and winning air supermarcy. And for that it does not matter if you smack them out of the sky with BVR missiles or if you bomb the shelters with SDBs. And the F-22 can do both better then any plane currently in service. And even better it can do so while needing much less support.
On the BVR thing, why talking about NAM. That is 30 days in the past today and was also hampered by stupid ROEs. Give your fighters a Link 16 datalink and suddently you have no prblems any more. Now every body on your side knows where the good guys are. So if there is a plane flying around, who is not a known good guy, well then waste him. And with the capability the F-22 can do it from long range.
The best fighter is the fighter that can kill the enemy without the nemy knowing he is under attack until it is too late for him to evade.

However a conventional fighter needs more support to do the same mission as a F22. If a F-22 can go to a place alone, where other fighters would need a HARM shooter and a jammer, then you see what the F-22 really is worth. Consider the price of a F-22 compared to the price of a new built F-15 + F-16CJ + F/A-18 G. Is the F-22 expensive then ??
If you consider the fact, that since the first WW, the majority of fighters have been shot down by planes, that they were not aware off, then the idea, that a fighter needs to make its presence known, is plain wrong. Add to that the speed of the F-22 which has shown to be able to supercruise at Mach 1.5 , then you get the ultimate predator of modern aerial warfare.
Now add some SDBs to the F/A-22. What you get is a self defending high speed F-117A replacement.

I also have two new babies

what a waste of resources to upgrade that old plane.

I’m pretty sure that production eurofighter will have some equipement that the tests EF2000 don’t.

Like what ??

Well afaik Rafale was clearly favored until Typhoo was demonstrated in Singapore. It has been rumored, that the plane exceeded the expectations and left the competitors stunned. Especially stunning was the supercruise performance. They did it with ease on a normal hot day. And they seem to have hit a bit more then just Mach 1.0.
Furthermore the Captor seems to have worked better, then the technolgy wise more advanced competitor.

I think this is a open race with no favorite at the moment.

But you don´t need the speed for an UACV. Transit time is of no importance, as the limiting human factor is irrelevant. Looking at Global Hawk there should be no problem to field a working long range strike UACV in 2015.