It's a pickle that is going to have to be worked out some point pretty soon!
Never said it was easy! Merely that running around saying the sky is falling isn't helping either and for the UK, wait and see (with a viable plan B) has to be the best option.
Given the shenanigans in Turkey atm, pinning a 3-400 cab order in that direction is - I would suggest - somewhat ambitious.
The USAF wants to build up a force of F-35As for dealing with AA/AD and targeting relocatable and transportable things wherever they might be.
and
The A is not required just to keep the numbers up but to stop the USAF tacair force from falling into a hole (age and capability) from which it cannot be extracted in decades.
don't actually comprise a requirement, rather a continuation of what the USAF TACAIR force does today. You are assuming that there is a need for a large USAF tacair force which will struggle to play in WestPac. If there's a real budget crunch (and there is) you probably need to think about which assets can be used everywhere and which can't, rather than who has the current force structure........