In most ways it’s a cheaper less capable version of the F-22 except it’s not significantly cheaper. The VTOL version of the F-35 has few direct competitors but then again it’s making serious sacrifices for VTOL capacity.
My understanding was that the F22 is more for a forward stealth air platform that is also intense at air to air. The F35 in “beast mode” is a gun truck in military jargon and isn’t really all that stealth at all. The F22 and F35 are meant for quite different missions and they’re best paired together.
The issue is the US military has more than just 2 aircraft. Sure, if it’s going to give up on being stealthy the F-35 can be a relatively slow gun rack with a pile of air to air missiles. Except giving up stealth and it’s lost most advantages over older and vastly cheaper aircraft.
Air to ground benefits from the extra carrying capacity but if you have air superiority then drones etc are again vastly more effective for the price. Sure, it’s got nice avionics right now, but that stuff gets replaced long before the aircraft gets retired.
That said we didn’t actually built that many F-22’s so we really needed something to pick up the slack.
