I think it’s interesting to look at other stealth vessels: Consider e.g. a submarine. It sacrifices speed and manuevrability to become as stealthy as possible.
AFAIK the F-35 is a compromise: It has higher RCS than e.g. the F-22; it also has lower speed and less maneuvrability than the F-22, Typhoon, (and also Rafale and SU-35?).
Imagine for a second; what about going the “submarine way”; Focus on stealth only and not speed and manouvrability. The result would be very different from a traditional fighter, but would it be less successful? I imagine such a stealth plane could have a max speed of 0.9M or something similar, and be equipped basically with the sensors that the F-35 will get; also it would be able to carry both a2a and a2g weapons. It should be able to fight 4.5-gen planes quite well (assuming that the stealth works as planned…). Just like the F-35 it would rely on “HOBS” instead of nose-pointing.
However that’s not the way the US, Russia and China seems to be moving. They want traditional speed and manuvrability in addition to a certain amount of stealth. Is this just because they are having problems “thinking outside the box”?
Or is the reason that stealth, even if optimized much further than what we see with the F-35, will not be able to offer sufficient survivability?
Or could there be other explanations?
i agree with your comparison with a sub other than maneuverability, the ones with a st andrews cross are very good
the cross is also used on f18,22,35
the f-35 nose point has a high aoa at 50+ deg compared to deltas at around 30, so it will be maneuverable
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