For now, there is no competitor against the f35. That's why Americans speak freely.
But now we have aesa radars on the ground Eirs and Akıncı and Kızılelma in the air. We will see the ingenuity of the f35 very soon.
Although, it has been seen a little in Syria, but there are those who do not believe it.
I feel like Israel helped more sales with Russian air defenses than they did with F-35s.
1. there was media news saying how Israel flew by the F-35 unnoticed however even if russian air defense operators have not seen it they would neither confirm nor deny that they saw it. Or not even have the fire control radars on but use low frequency like VHF which Israel did not have next gen jammers during that time to monitor those frequencies or just use passive radar detection for the aircrafts. This also means that luneberg lenses were not installed if they made it seem their purpose was for stealth of not being seen by S-400 thus giving Russians useful data on the RCS. No idea since the Turkey Russia F-16/Su-24 incident of them having an excuse the bring the S-400 to Syria thus monitoring parts of Turkey's airspace might have been another reason for the U.S. to deny Turkey F-35s? I even believe that Poland will take Western Ukraine because if knock on wood if Russia takes kyiv a S-400s near the borders of NATO countries will definitely be monitoring aircraft airspaces of potential F-35 customers
2. 4th gen F-16s with EW got shot down in Syria by an S-200, and during the 2018 Christmas strike they state 14 out of 16 missiles missed and Israel on that same date on debka news admitted the 1s t wave they missed their targets but used F-35s on the 2nd wave with glide bombs for a better chance of hitting targets.
3. Israel operated on S-300s with Greece and immediately threatened Russia if those 3 S-300PM1s hit a israeli aircraft they would launch all their missiles like LORA at those sites. So they did hype up the threat of an S-300 even with F-16s and F-35s at their disposal.
Also news has shown before that the F-22 was .0001m2 from the front (however its stealth for being air to air combat role means most of its stealth was optimized to work against fire control frequencies) while the F-35 was .001m2, but news came later that the F-35 was better than the F-22 from General Hostage so this sudden switch raises eyebrows for me. But we know the F-35 has to be optimized to work against low and high frequencies because of air to ground missions. Of course, there is other officials that spoke shit about it like Christopher miller calling it a POS than an air force general talking about a stealth like F-16 design.
The frontal aspect of the F-22 was .0001m2 according to the earliest news until more news came and buried that same claim but saying its stealth in general. The frontal aspect is always the stealthiest part of any aircraft. But my other problem is this.
Aircrafts always descend or ascend in flight and sometimes always don't fly perfectly straight like turning or in a diving position towards a radar. Radar readings will not just come from the front but from the ventral area or body that has the most surface area than compared to the front. Also, the data was taken from a 2007 radar of the S-400 not taking into account S-400s have been upgraded with 2015 or 2022 radars. Then there have been advancements in photonic radars as well. I am undecided about the F-35.