Busdriver - Fanx. Helpful response.
The site you link to is the work of a perpetually cranky individual who has a tendency to mangle data. My own assessment (plus the odd bit of data along the way) is that the F-35A will accelerate quite quickly at subsonic speeds (and will outrun a lot of things if two 2K bombs are carried) but starts to run into the wall transonic and above, whether heavy or light. The culprit is a forebody that has to accommodate a regional jet engine standing on its end.
As for maneuver: I'm very wary of any calculations involving wing loading because the F-35A's ratio of net-to-gross wing area is off the charts. That's to say, the actual wings are much smaller than the 460 ft2 nominal (gross) area because the body is so wide. Nor is the front end particularly well shaped to develop lift efficiently.
This seems to have been a deliberate design trade: The F-35C has a much bigger wing to make its CV approach speed and isn't about to win drag races.
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.
That's quite correct. But two points: The Radar Game, with which I am familiar, misses the relationship between RCS and burn-through range (where reflection = jamming power) which is nicely synergistic. When the F-22/35 LO technology got started, however, the US had a horrible history with automated EW and didn't remotely want to think about going that way. The Euros persisted and if you ask the French, moderate RCS reduction + jamming + standoff is a good balance.
The second point is that if you really want to exploit stealth and take the platform into the red zone, and you've already sacrificed much of the kinematics, maybe you should go all the way into all-aspect and wideband. The Radar Game doesn't mention this either, but this is the Neuron/Taranis/X-47 route.
If I was buying an AF I'd go for JAS 39Es and cruise missiles and use the spare cash for a few UCAVs. Because, pace MSOCS, the money spent on one thing cannot be spent on another.
Last edited by LowObservable; 6th Mar 2015 at 16:19.