Ken
You stated: The F-35 is not nor was it ever intended to be an air superiority fighter.
I gave you two sourced quotes in which it was advertised as exactly that.
Your interpretation. I interpreted it quite differently and said so. That you missed that appears willful. Is that because you are pissed off? And separately, I posit that no uniformed decision maker (I will not include the politicians nor the few handwringers in this thread) in USAF, USN, RN, RAF, or the air arm of any nation bought the F-35 thinking it was an air superiority fighter. None. You handwringers are welcome to fantasize otherwise.
And on the subject of air superiority fighters, are Mirages air superiority fighters with high levels of close-in air combat capability? Really? And yet France and many other nations have depended on them to defend their nation. For decades. Those were of course all very bad decisions.