Response to Hortlunds post:
-The Eurofighter is now in production and should enter service starting late this year or early next year with some countries.
-The Jas-39 Gripen is an outstanding fighter. In a post at the military.com message boards I once rated the Gripen highly in a thread about the worlds best fighters. I consider the Gripen to be certainly in the inner circle or top notch combat aircraft for a number of reasons. The F-22 however, is simply in a quite another category. It has a number of advantages over the Jas-39. These include: Greater top speed overall + the ability to fly supersonic without using AB. Stealth. Greater range. Superior ECM suite. Integrated firecontrol and communications systems similar to the current JTIDs system used by the F-15, that allow information sharing among platforms. Better radar. I cannot say with certainty which aircraft is more manouverable since there are no unclassified numbers available that would allow a definitive comparison of the 2 fighters yet. I suspect that in manouverability the 2 are very close. The F-22 is supposed to be similar in manouverability to the F-16 which means that the Gripen should be very nearly as manouverable if not equal.
Other than that the F-22 is the superior weapon, as it should be since it is newer and has the benefit of the intervening years of rapid technology growth, not to mention the massive budget that the Raptor has enjoyed.
-I tend to agree with your 3rd point up to a certain point, avionics and missiles have more to do with winning the fight nowadays then do speed and manoverability. The latter 2 factors definitely still have their place though. Speed is still important because it allows you to control the engagement. The ability to run down enemy fighters (or to run away itself if need be, for whatever reason) is extremely important. Agility and manouverability can and do still play a role if the fight gets in close for whatever reason. Read the article that started off this thread to see how superior radar can occasionally be overcome using innovative tactics.
As to how the F-15 is superior to the Gripen or Super Hornet, they are actually pretty evenly matched. That was my USAF prejudice showing itself a little. Both the Super Hornet and the Gripen have smaller radar signatures. They are also both more manouverable than the Eagle, although not by a huge margin.
The F-15 is a little faster and still has better radar overall. They all 3 use the same weapons. The F-15 has the better range. All in all they are pretty closely matched though. That is in terms of air to air work. The F-15E is easily the better strike fighter of the 3 though due to its better range, terrain following radar, and bigger payload. I am going to try to find that post I did on military.com about the top 10 fighters and repost it here as a new topic.
And finally, regarding the Falklands war, I would say that the British DID have air superiority and it was an important factor. The Harriers were able to shoot down quite a few Argentine aircraft (around 20 I believe if I remember correctly) while the Argentines were only able to shoot down 1 Marine helicoptor in air to air fighting. Some other British aircraft were shot down by ground fire and/or missiles. The Argentines were able to hit and sink a number of Royal Navy ships using Exocets launched from shore and from Etendard fighters. They also used A-4s to bomb using iron bombs and I think they even sunk a ship using those. However, despite the couragous resistance of the Argentine Air Force and Naval Air arms, the British were able to do pretty much as they pleased in the air. It was definitely air superiority for the British, although not the total air dominance that the US and allies enjoyed in Desert Storm/ Kosovo/ Afghanistan.
