There has been one US F35 damaged in combat. That's total, across all the areas its been in and all the countries that have deployed them, starting in 2018. They've been up against the best air defense systems in the world in Venezuela and Iran and they received a single scratch.
The countries acquiring them are doing so because they are best strike fighters on the planet, and it's not even close. Unless you know something that Norway, Japan, England, the Netherlands, etc don't know?
give yourself a break. F-35 doesn't even have long range a2a missiles comparable to PL-17 in service. its radar is 2nd class at best, a full generation behind the Chinese counterpart and heavily rely on Chinese rare earth.
it is 2026 now, partially de-industrialized US no longer has the best weapons in the world. that is why it is struggling to even beat Iran.
The radar might be second class (not sure I would go that far, it's not a Thales radar but it's still good), but the plane is built with EW in mind, and that makes it useful.
What makes it bad is how hard the cooling is, its range without range extenders (that break stealth) and the maintenance.
Yeah, I wonder why the F-35 doesn't have a couple of 20 foot long missiles hanging off the side of it. I truly can't think of a single reason.
Clearly the Americans are just dumb. Or, maybe, just maybe, a stealth strike fighter uses an internal weapons bay? While the planes flying with the PL-17s strapped to it have the radar cross section of a city bus?
Why would Japan mass produce an inferior product when they would easily be able to design and build a far superior one? "Shahed" isn't just another word for drone, it's a specific company's name.
