[Retric]

The US wants 2,456 F-35s that’s just a lot of freaking aircraft. It’s actually extremely well designed for this kind of combat. Stealth alone is overrated, but these things get to fight back and they don’t fight alone. Sam sites, manned or unmanned aircraft etc are targets. It’s exactly the same stupid expensive avionics and training programs that make the F-35 so expensive that make it effective.

The US can soften things up with cruse missiles and the F-22 or it’s successors, the F-35’s job is to crush what remains and it does that very well. Difficult enough to fight that you need expensive and therefore difficult to replace weapons systems while still being affordable enough to be plentiful.