Thanks CM. But I'm still not all that convinced.
Your first day of strike F15SE no longer has it's navigation pod, IRST or sniper pod attached to it when performing a strike mission. To carry all of it pretty much appears to break any kind of frontal aspect LO.
It looks like to offer the electronics capability of the F35 you end up with in effect an F15E so why buy the F15SE? To offer stealth you end up with a much more 'basic' avionics.
Seems to me to perform any strike missions which to me is the whole point of the Joint Strike Fighter you'd need several 'day two' F15SE's datalinked to several day one F15SE's to actually acheive the same effect has half the number of F35's would be able to acheive. I'm not saying that's wrong as surely that's not all that disimilar to the current status quo? To me the avionics and sensor fit is what makes the JSF a fifth generation platform not it's performance figures which are just 'ok' and it's those systems that enable missions to be performed differently using less assets or with a 'stealthy' swing role edge. Or at least thats the theory. I guess we'll see.
As I said to me it appears like a bit of a lashup to be able to keep a production line and revenue stream going much like the F18 update that Boeing were touting a while back, which would be a management driven strategy as opposed to an engineering led strategy imho.