In some ways I feel that the 'challenge' of stealth, and I suppose the F35 project itself, is doing to the western defence budgets a similar thing that the 'challenge' of Ronald Reagan's "Star Wars" technological race did to / for the Soviet economy.
Having too few super-dooper things is not always (or ever) the counter to having more, slightly less-super-dooper things.
You need to have enough pf them to be able to make use of them; and this is the Achilles' Heel of the project and as said earlier, is complicated further with the mantra of the design having commonalities - but chasing the mediocre characteristics imposed by the -B model design.