kungfugymnast
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This is not necessarily so. F-35 stealth is to date unproven. Who knows if it's really stealth? Maybe it's not stealthy at all.
F-35 stealth is indeed proven and using 2nd generation stealth materials currently. For export variant, we won't know how much US downgraded the material as the few main NATO countries and US close ally Japan are likely to secretly try to reverse engineer and replicate US technology. The weaknesses of F-35 lies on maintenance, unreliable impractical parts that are designed to milk cash out of buyers, the low maximum speed, limitation of single engine and lacked of side bays. They'll need lots of F-35 to carry out missions of a squad of F-16C or F/A-18E due to limitation with belly only internal bay.