Its stealth is good. Its EW and Avionics are probably good... now, after a decade of production, and with Block 4 around the corner.
As planes, they were terrible when introduced a decade ago, and mediocre now.
Too much functionality was promised too soon without adequate project management. Instead of modularity being the design philosophy for the NGAD, and shoehorned into the F-35 during production, it should've been the design philosophy for the F-35A/C from the start.
Too many compromises were made to make the three variants share a similar design despite radically different missions.
The F-35B should never have existed.
The parts commonality numbers say it all. Initially projected to be 70%, but when it neared production the actual commonality figure was 25%. I haven't seen that broken down, but I bet the F-35B is a large part of that.
As planes, they were terrible when introduced a decade ago, and mediocre now.
Too much functionality was promised too soon without adequate project management. Instead of modularity being the design philosophy for the NGAD, and shoehorned into the F-35 during production, it should've been the design philosophy for the F-35A/C from the start.
Too many compromises were made to make the three variants share a similar design despite radically different missions.
The F-35B should never have existed.
The parts commonality numbers say it all. Initially projected to be 70%, but when it neared production the actual commonality figure was 25%. I haven't seen that broken down, but I bet the F-35B is a large part of that.