Exactly so, on the issue of systems not being tested out. We just do not know.

But getting back to f22 and f35 issue, it is interesting that price of f22 seems to be dropping while price of f35 keeps rising. If indeed price of barebone f22 will drop to 100 million while price of f35 rises to some, say, 70 million we very well might see lots more f22s built, instead of f35s. With china on the rise that might not be so far fetched.

Seriously, if f35 ends up being just some 30-40% cheaper while :
having no supercruise and slower top speed
having rather unimpressive T/W ratio
half the range of f22
packing smaller radar with shorter range
being less maneoverable
being less stealthy frontally than the f22 and especially from the back
and, if it wants to keep its stealth level, carrying at most 4 aams in a2a missions.

Actually, with the proliferation of sdb, and knowing f22 can in the future be ‘wired up’ to carry any weapon externally, f35 doesn’t seem to have such an edge in a2g missions either. Its weapon bays arent that much bigger than f22s. It can carry a 2000 lbs jdam bomb internally and maybe jsow but that’s about it. In my opinion not a huge advantage over the f22 interal weapons bay capability.

Technology to give US a hard time attacking even with f22 / f35 combo is available. detection systems are there, weapons platforms are there. Thing is – very few countries have them in enough numbers and proper, well-trained, manner. There are those who would want to have them but can’t afford them – like iraq or even iran and there are those who could afford to build a very costly to penetrate defense but choose not to waste such money as they know US would do try to avoid war at almost all cost – like china.

As for the whole SAM vs stealth craft with SDBs debate – one thing makes sams more lethal for US than enemy air force can be. They’re mobile, hard to detect and require very littl support equipment to do their missions compared to your average plane. With todays integrated sensor networks one can’t really just shot off the whole network down with a few strikes. One has to keep destroying the bits of that network piece by piece, encountering sams along the way. What use is sending a tomahawk towards a location where you’ve once seen a sam radar station when it can keep moving around and hiding from the view?

In vietnam missiles were pretty poor. maybe some 10% of ones that were fired would actually reach their targets. But the effectiveness has went up faster than decoys, jamming, evading tech could match. So today we do have a situation where sams like the patriot and s300 family are deadlier to a plane then ever before in history of sam vs plane showdowns. Attacking a target that’s protected by few patriot / s300 batteries with a squadron of f16s would be next to suicide.

US has put most of its money on stealth. Whats the use of powerful missile system if you can’t actually get a lock on the plane in time to prevent it from fulfilling its mission? How effective stealth of b2, f22, f35 is against old sensor / sam networks like iraq or serbia – w’ve seen. But they’ve never been tried against up to date radars and sam networks. And we won’t know the effectivess until there is a war against enemies with such networks.