This is precisely what I was saying about the F35 for ages. Use a an affordable multirole airplane & use a dedicated stealth platform for missions that require stealth fighters in the beginning of a war, preferably the future stealth bomber complemented by a stealth UCAV.
A dedicated flying wing will always be more stealthy than your F35 which has to make sacrifices wrt stealth to get at least decent manoeuvrability. As a bonus your UCAV fleet needs not pilot in-flight training, saving huge amounts of flight time to keep it only for testing and operational flying. Lastly those UCAVs can be complemented by stand off missiles from your other platforms.
At the same time you can use all your fuel & flight time to keep your pilots proficient on a 4+ gen fighter which will cost much less to operate in peace time than a F35 thanks to much lower drag (no weapons bay), and less maintenance requirements.
Nic
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