Kalman, anyone..?
re the image of the vortex wake, it is misleading in the response of the following aircraft from the tip vortex and sheet rollup:
If the right wing of the following aircraft enters the wake structure, the roll is in the opposite sense, it's an upwash region.
If the aircraft enters obliquely, pitch will be affected, initially a pitch down...
The F-35 will shed pretty energetic tip vortices with full flap, (no surprise there low aspect, high CL), but the following aircraft has oodles of control authority, if the confusers are allowing the driver to apply an input. The P/S systems going to the ADC's if based on static sensors are very sensitive to perturbation, statics always are. In reviewing wake encounter data for RPT aircraft, the static data gives a pretty clear indication of the entry and exit of the conditions, even where the plane plows happily along. Where the static system feeds to the confuser and that has authority to outvote the driver, then stuff happens.[1] How important the static system is was shown with the B2 Spirit takeoff out of Andersen, Guam a number of years ago. If fort fumble expects the drivers to do 9,000' trail, then they need to do that standard, not just when it might be turbulent. For a 4-ship recovery, that should be fun to manage... 27,000' between lead and #4 in the pattern, ~4.5nm, 1.5nm per break interval, not a 3-sec break. Pairs recovery might work better. A figure of "9000' " is arbitrary. vortices can exhibit buoyancy, interaction between the pairs, and generally are a pain to track. They will initially be above the wing plane near the wing TE, but then descent below the plane of the wing, and slowly sink over time, eventually they go to a vortex instability where they will precess with or without the interaction with the other vortex filament [2], unless the local environment has lots of shear in which case they will go to a vortex burst. Being slightly above the leading aircraft is beneficial, at all times.
[1] I'm not an F-35 background, but have done a number of investigations into wake events on airline aircraft, and have some time on FBW systems (>10K, 5 FBW types)
[2] VCI, Vortex Crow Instability, see: Crow, S. C. (1970). "Stability theory for a pair of trailing vortices". AIAA Journal.8 (12): 2172–2179.