Basil, That's come up else where before. The short is that Spanky was commenting based on limited information and he admitted as much later. There is no doubt the F-35 is not the F-22 when it comes to kinematics, they were designed with different mindsets. Just looking at them parked next to each to other that much becomes obvious.
A lot of the hand wringing here seems to be about what it can currently do, which is to say not much. The thing is still in system design and development. From what I could find in 6-9 seconds on google we're about 5 years late to planned first IOC. Dudes I know in the program seem to think it will be an awesome jet in the next 5-10 years and is basically back on track if you ignore the 5 year setback.
The next question is if you look forward 5-10 years, what would the capability be of our legacy platforms in that threat environment? Third world ****-holes will probably still be just that, what we have now is fine. Near peer countries will still be nasty and the purvue of LO only platforms, legacy will be relegated to standoff munitions only, with their lengthy flight time. What about countries like
Algeria? How many countries will be able to afford jumping from we're good to go to pretty scary? I don't think anyone knows for sure.
This whole thing is a lot more complicated than "the Air Force hates CAS, because the A-10 doesn't have a pointy nose and all they care about is the glory of shooting down planes" and other non-sense emotional arguments. I say all that as a slow ass helo pilot that would prefer the A-10 didn't go away anytime soon. But there is only so much money.