Radix, snarky much? Cheers! Of course the answer is that it isn't doing much of **** yet. The five years of "progress hiatus" is more than a bit depressing.
LO, Foreplay doesn't really cover it, more like Tease.
The thing is, all that stuff is classified for a reason. Furthermore you can't expect the same advancement in aerodynamics from the Hurricane to the Block 10 Viper. Hell just look at the advancement from the B-29 to the B-52. There is a difference between development when something is completely new, to once a technology is mature.
I'm not sure which specs you're doubting. But you can do the math yourself as far as wing loading and acceleration times and compare to the F-16C/D, or you can go here:
Not My Website if you don't trust his math somewhere in there is a link to an F-16C/D performance charts. If your point of comparison is a clean block 52 with half internal fuel, gun and only 2x wingtip missiles, then no an F-35 can't hope to compete at BFM.
If you actually loaded them up and told a more reasonable story, they're very similar. Something more like full internal fuel (plus 2x wing tanks for the F-16) and 4x A-A missiles. At fight start the F-16 gets to drop it's tanks, but it's still full internal fuel since it's been feeding off the drops, the F-35 has burned off 5k pounds, the same fuel in 2x 370 gallon tanks. That results in 96lbs/sqft for the F-35 and 91lbs/sqft for the F-16, so pretty similar. If the mod to carry 6x AIM-120s ever happens that disparity shrinks. All that is Wikipedia numbers so take with a grain or two of salt.
As far as your IADS point, all of that high end EW and SEAD is much more effective with an LO platform. Standoff jammers can standoff a lot further if the jets going into the MEZ are LO and a big part of the problem being addressed is a MEZ that is much deeper than in the past.
I don't know how much you guys know about LO design but if you haven't read it, I recommend "
The Radar Game" it's not all telling, but it does start to explain that "stealth" isn't about being invisible, but rather managing your signature in a predictable way.
There is no doubt that advanced electronic protection and RCS reduction measures that don't go all the way to internal carriage, would be better than legacy systems and wouldn't suffer the drag penalty of an LO platform the size of the F-35. I'm assuming you're referring to the Super Hornet here, which is somewhat amusing since that platform is notoriously draggy and bleeds energy with it's non-jettisonable pylons installed. And based on test reports the F-35 problems with drag are due to transonic wave drag not canted pylons and it actually accelerates very fast in the subsonic regime.
But at the end of the day all designs are compromises, in this case a decision was made to accept kinematics similar to legacy jets. In all fairness I'm guessing the F-35 is somewhere between an F-16 and F-18. In exchange it gets LO. At this point in the process, it's all the fancy avionics (software) that are really the test burden. After that it's a matter of integrating an insane number of weapons.
Is the F-35 perfect? No ******* way. But it's a far cry from the hand wringing, spittle flying, worst thing the military has ever bought abortion that APA would have people believe.