Neither BMS nor EECH are commercial products you can buy today, being supported by a company that exists today. They are 90s programs that have been modded beyond recognition, perhaps, but they are still products that saw commercial release last over 15 years ago.
Therefore, they do not count because they are not current retail SKUs. Just because some simmers like them doesn't mean they're competition for new products.
BMS has never been a product you can buy, but you **CAN** buy Falcon 4.0 via The Falcon Collection on Steam or GoG. While Falcon 4.0 is no longer "supported," BMS does have a very active "independent dev team" who, considering what they've done to a very old sim, are quite dedicated and talented individuals. I'm less familiar with EECH though so I'll hold my comments on that. A quick eBay search does easily turn up copies of EECH for around £10 though.
If the criteria is "current availability," then Falcon BMS at least counts. Maybe not before this Tommo/new license thing where the only source of a legit copy of Falcon 4.0 were extortionate eBay prices, but with TFC on Steam/GoG, then that has made Falcon 4.0 and BMS available again.
If the criteria is "support by publishers/developers," then yeah, Falcon BMS is obviously supported by the BMS team and has the "offical blessing" by the copyright owner(s). Again, I'm not so familiar with EECH but isn't it also being worked on as shown by the activity on the EECH sub-forum?
The fact is that a 15+ year old game is still a valid alternative and is an in-depth, full switchology sim with a better (faultier?) campaign engine. It also has the F-15 (E version, I believe), F-18, and Harrier jets. So I guess in a way, you are correct. DCS falls short as competition.
