Those 36 F-35’s could erase any other airforce in the world in a few hours. Now, I do think it was a horribly wasteful project: my preference was some more F-22’s and a bunch of “busses” (B-52s) once the air is clear. But it really is a spectacular aircraft.
I would have loved to see more F-22s as well, but I think the F-35 is going to work out just fine. The rapidly shrinking pool of critics is fixated on comparing things like turn rates in an attempt to fit the F-35 into outdated scenarios of constant close-in dogfights. That’s not what this aircraft is intended to do, nor is it likely that it would face such a scenario very often.
One thing that is often overlooked is that while the F-35 is ingressing to a target, and egressing back out again, its systems are capturing tons of data about air and ground-based threats in the area and instantly relaying that information to the rest of the force. Information dominance, I would argue, is FAR more important to a modern military’s odds of success than is air dominance (though the F-22 and upgraded 4th Generation aircraft will provide that in spades anyway).
It’s also important to remember that the F-35 will be built in huge numbers. I remember debates years ago about whether the U.S.’s smaller number of more technologically-advanced aircraft was superior to the Soviet Union’s much larger number of less-advanced aircraft, or if the horde of Soviet fighters would simply overwhelm our forces, even if the Soviets did suffer more losses per engagement. Well, with the F-35 we will have the best of both those worlds, extreme technological superiority along with large numbers. I don’t see much chance of Russia for sure, and maybe more arguably China, being able to match that combination.