Baseline for getting your money’s worth from spending 1.5 TRILLION more than anybody else on development of a type of airplane is that your airplane should be the best airplane of that type.

and it is

if you read the article:

Before the F-35, if I was going to fly a mission into a peer nation’s territory to strike against a well-protected target, I would need a minimum of 16 aircraft,” he said.

“You would have jamming aircraft – which, by the way, says, ‘Hello, we’re coming’ – then you’d send in suppression of enemy air defence aircraft, because you’d have to kill the radars off, then you’d send fast strike aircraft in.

“I can now do that same mission with four F-35s and no support. And they don’t need protection afterwards, because they can fight their way out.

this is in a war against a peer opponent, like everyone in europe is preparing for. F35 is not a COIN plane, you’re looking for something like skywarden there (A10 sucks balls and was outdated the day it appeared on drawing board - you cannot change my mind). advanced aircraft like F35 allows you to both decrease package size and allows you to do things that you straight up can’t do without them, and comparing to loads of other older aircraft needed it is cheaper to use the new shiny thing. because of sheer scale of manufacture - 1000 was made and deliveries are 5 years away because demand is so high - development costs will be spread across all of these. both russians and chinese develop their own stealth multirole planes, su-57 and j-20 respectively, chinese additionally are working on stealth bomber, h-20, so it’s obvious they see their utility too, unless your conspiracy involves them all.

another random example

you need separate AWACS less because F35 has powerful radar, and it can also double as EW suite so there’s less need for dedicated EW aircraft too. without stealth aircraft you can’t sneak on your target and if done right this can give you massive advantage

or this one https://mail.ausairpower.net/API-VLO-Strike.html

maybe you’re just a fan of human wave tactics in comically obsolete planes like F104 soaking up most probable adversary’s SAMs like there’s no tomorrow. but don’t pretend you know shit about fuck

if you prefer video format https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGwU9HKH_Eo extra details there https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OH-aJEloMbs

it’s all “hey don’t do the thing that works, instead give money to meeee”

it’s a superior replacement to about any other plane (with single exception of F-22 for air dominance, but it’s not made now anyway) absolute state of the art apex predator in air, and scale of procurement brings costs down

there is a reason why no one makes single-purpose planes anymore and it’s degree of flexibility multirole allows, simplified logistics, less number of airframes needed for mission and a couple others. drones are very narrow purpose tools with short range relying on unjammed radio spectrum, or else extremely specialized long range heavier systems available only in small numbers. these things are replacement of ATGMs and cruise missiles, not aircraft. these things don’t even come close to each other