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.
The more serious kvetch about all that, to include all of that software, is how much it costs per unit.
After that it's a matter of integrating an insane number of weapons.
More cost.
