Considering that the only nation to use it in combat so far is Israel and they seem to like it and despite theirs being heavily modified I would err on the side

Considering that the only nation to use it in combat so far is Israel and they seem to like it and despite theirs being heavily modified I would err on the side of caution swallowing these gloomy statements whole. The same thing was said about the F16 in it’s early days. And in fact it was the IAF that proved that it was suited for both long distance combat sorties and old school bomb sights bombing runs when they used it to take out Osirak nuclear reactor in Iraq which proved many F16 critics at the time wrong. The truth is that these days no replacement for a fighter jet would that much superior to what it’s replacing not because it’s poorly designed but because what it’s replacing has had 40 years worth of improvements. Current block 70 F16s have nearly nothing in common with the original fighting falcon there likely isn’t a single part that is even interchangeable between them. That said the F16 unlike the F35 doesn’t have another 40 years it’s air frame has already been stretched (literarily) beyond its limits so we do need a new platform regardless of its growing pains. And for people criticizing the F35 over its low order numbers well they are low compared to the F16 but the F16 has been in service for 40 years and introduced during essentially the largest arms race the world has ever seen aka the Cold War. P.S. On a tangent since when did Twitter outside of rare current events became a source worthy of an HN post?