Without look-down capabilities an opponent is able to force the fighter into undesirable positions, possibly even denying a shot at all. You can go without it, but I think it increases the ability significantly. For a continental European theatre with low level intruders radar guided missiles without that capability are nearly useless.

Sorry did not make the sarcasm clear enough.

However I find it very interesting to provlaim that the F-4 was not needed for the defence of Great Britain, when you have the Tornado F-3 as the replacement, which seems just a little closer to the F-4 the to the Lightning imho.

Stealth is an advantage, but for the ground attack role you can use 2 options.

One is to built a stealthy aircraft and drop JDAM from within the enemies weapons range. The other is to take a conventional aircraft that fires stealthy and precision guided stand-off weapons from outside the enemies weapons range.

For a country like the Netherlands, which is higly unlikely to face an advanced air defence system on its own, the second option might be more efficent. Especially as it easier to upgrade the weapons, then the aircraft.

1) The U.K. did not need that capability. It was a luxury.

2) The F-4M was not helpful for intercepting high flying intruders.

3) The British had other attack jets that could satisfy their needs.

4) The F-4M was not worth the cost, especially at twice the price.

5) The RAF did not want the F-4M. It was foisted on them.

The Spey Phantom was a dog above 35,000 feet and almost useless above 45,000 when the engines “ran out of steam” as Squadron Leader Riley put it.

But if the F-4 was so unneeded in the ground role, I wonder why they did use it not only in the RAFG but also for defense of the British isles and why they went for a squadron of F-4J to add more F-4s to the force.

So much for “freed up money”

The RAFG did not need this, the RAF however should be not unhappy to be able to intercept Russian bombers far out over the North Sea.

2) AIM-7 and a radar the even offered early look-down capabilities was surely not needed.

3) More Buccs, more Cans or the Jag coming in earlier?

4) That is true the H-79 powered versions were better. Ask the british F-4J(UK) pilots.

5) Well that can be discussed.

Surely they did, as they were the only British units to have the AIM-7. So obviously they did devlop air-to-air tactics with the sparrow. And with the AIM-7 they onviously were a serious threat to all other RAF fighters, which lacked such a capbility. (and they were alos superior to most NATO fighters as well with the AN/AWG-12 in theri mounts.

But we have to see that in the RAFG the Lightnings were the kings of the dogfight, when it comes to pilot training.
The USAFE was not yet learning the lessons fron NAM and still believed that the dogfight is a dying art.
The other NATO players had no planes to match an F-4 in overall capability, even though Mirage III and F-104 sometimes scored a few surprises.

So in the end. the RAF F-4 crews were less trained in the art of dogfight then the RAF Lightnings, while the RAF was still better trained then the USAFE.

So if we talk about a dogfight between a RAF F-4 and a RAF Lightning the advantage in training and pilot quality should lie with the Lightning. Once the RAF F-4 went air-to-air only they became a quite feared opponent. So with lacking in air-to-air I mean lacing compared to the later times when they were pure air defence trained.

It is a very hard comparison. Tejas is not fully developed and it seems like the final production engine has not been found.
Thunder is also not fully developed and there is lack of detail information about its performance.
As of today the airframe is one thing, but the avionics are the other and the availble AAMs are not to be forgotten, it is hard to judge them.
Only thing one can say that Tejas is less important to the capabilities of the Indian Air Force then Thunder is to the capabilities of the Pakistan Air Force.

This weekend I must look through my archives. I think I have an article in German written by RAF Lightning pilots on how they flew and bounced NATO fighters that crossed their area.

Seahawk, the RAF ground-pounder F-4Ms were very much multi role, and practised the AD role religiously. They expected to self escort, and even kept fully up to speed with use of the Sparrow and BVR tactics. The only thing that they didn’t do in RAFG while the Lightning was there was ‘Battle Flight’.

Yet the Lightnings did nothing but air-to-air. Due to the aircraft they did not need to train BVR they did not need to anything for air-to-ground, all they did was dogfighting.