You answered your own question.
The F-22 was a money sink, it is by far the least efficient plane on the planet, even for its production run.
Costing $350 million per unit.
The F-22 is a status symbol, much like the Su-30MKI and SM.
F-22 is great for air shows which the crews do often. However, the F-22 was never really our best jet, it was our only stealth fighter so there’s that.
Dogfight doctrine means no thrust vectoring engines.
AIM-9Xs, MICA, AAM-5, and IRIS-T all ended any need for thrust vectoring engines.
R-73 itself ended the need for thrust vectoring engines in your proven incorrect scenario.
You shot yourself in the foot as soon as you mentioned DCS, but your original post had this sense of “this is how it should be” which seemed familiar to me that of people who watch DCS or play DCS.
The problem with DCS is there’s nothing to prevent people from making overperforming custom modules as that is up to every mod creator. A Frenchman could make an overperforming Rafale, an American could make an overperforming F-18, a Russian could make an overperforming Su-30SM. There’s no check in place.
With Warthunder/Gaijin, you must present sources and create bug/historical reports in order to have flight models adjusted. Gaijin is then seen as a more independent sole authority that can determine if the information presented are quality sources or not.
So it is problematic to say “this is how it is in DCS, so it should be this way in Warthunder”.
The Mirage 2000 in DCS outrates F-16 according to several YouTubers who have calculated sustained turn rates. Should that be the case in Warthunder too?
It’s not a perfect system by any means but it is far superior to what is going on with DCS.
" Thrust Vectoring offers great advantages for modern
military aircraft, in return for relatively small changes
in the aircraft, and is clearly the way to go for the
future"
That come from one of study on TVC for the Eurofighter.
And to this day they have no data to support that conjecture.
The best dogfights in the world all run conventional engines, and F-18 is already the closest to the perfect dogfighter design but falls short in a number of design issues that the Typhoon doesn’t have as many in.
Part of that is thrust, the fact militaries haven’t ordered F414s for F-18Cs is a travesty. The F-18E ruined the F-18C by being worse.
Thrust vectoring was done decades before AESA.
The mass increase from thrust vectoring engines to produce the same thrust doesn’t outweigh the extremely limited extremely low speed benefits.
You keep talking nonsense. AL-31 weight 1520k. AL-31fp 1600k. 100k its nothing. To the benefice it provide. And in the study it even said that depend on the type of Nozzle used it can even increase the final Thrust of the engine.
I’m always confused when you talk about TV. Are you talking about 2D and 3D? Because based off my research the best 3D TV aircraft is the X-62 VISTA. Also 2D thrust vectoring can provide some benefits on lighter airframes but it is very expensive. Like the F-22
I think the best TV test platform would’ve been F-18, but even with the F-16 test it resulted in slightly lower performance.
And with AIM-9X, there’s just no need for thrust vectoring when you can just have better aircraft design with high AOA capability from the control surfaces.
What about the F-22? I mean doesn’t the vertical thrust vectoring help its maneuverability more than it hurts it. I saw that only when it is used right will it allow more beneficial 9x launches