Mach Two, thanks for your reasoned response. I will attempt to respond in kind.
"Tornado" - different generation, different threat, very different conops, different load, different range, not supposedly air-to-air (refer you to John Farley's recent support of claims that F-35 is a magnificent air-to-air fighter). You'd have to be ill-informed or clutching at straws to make that comparison.
Agreed. To a point. My point being that a number of national air arms accepted the Tornado's poor turn performance on the basis that it was optimized for the air-to-ground role, not the air-to-air role. The Tornado's turn performance relative to its opponents did not make the aircraft "defective" and its other features overcome its poor turn performance relative to the opponents it would face. That turn performance did not even make Tornado "defective" when the RAF flew for decades a (supposedly) air-to-air optimized ADF Tornado. In short, I was attempting to point out the inconsistency in arguments regarding turn performance for the Tornado vs the F-35. If Tornado's turn performance was "good enough" to counter its opponents, then F-35's turn performance is more than likely "good enough" to counter its opponents.
"NOTHING (not even A-10) beats the F-35 in the air-to-ground role in a contested air environment" - as yet, it has proved nothing. The Project Office and LM have claimed what you claim. So far, the test pilots have released some weapons. It will be a long time before that bold claim can be proved.
Well, very recent (June 2015) Green Flag exercises (similar to Red Flag exercises, but Green Flag is optimized toward Air-To-Ground while Red Flag is optimized toward Air-to-Air) that involved F-35s, ONLY the F-35 hit all the targets and ONLY the F-35 did so without a single loss. Yes this was the first time F-35 was in Green Flag and folks will figure out how to operate against it, but the fact remains, the performance was stellar and nothing beat it.
"stellar air-to-ground platform with "good enough" air-to-air performance" - Stellar? And good enough? No proof of "stellar" yet. "Good enough" was not the claim until a few years ago. It was supposed to be indestructible and invisible. Look at the claims and links in the first 150 pages of this thread alone. Why have all those claims suddenly gone away? In who's service will it be only just "good enough"?
I refer you to the Green Flag exercises of June 2015 for the F-35s "stellar" air-to-ground performance. And maneuverability was "good enough" that the F-35 was able to defeat both SAMS and fighters sent up against it. And by "defeat" not necessarily shoot down the defending fighters, but maneuver (DACM) so as to prevent being shot down while STILL accomplishing the mission.
As for better than the Phantom and the Tornado (not sure which model you mean), it should be better than the one that first flew in 1958 (Phantom) and it is in a different class (not saying better nor worse, just different) to any Tornado (E, F or GR).
Again, my intent was not to compare the F-35 against the Phantom or Tornado. My intent was to show that while the Phantom and Tornado were some of the best of their respective periods, BOTH were significantly worse than their opponents (1960/70 vintage Sukhoi's and MiGs) when it came to turn performance. Moving forward to our time, while the F-35 is worse than many other current fighters (21st century Sukhoi's and MiGs) in turn performance, like the F-4 and Tornado before it, it is "good enough" to enable it to use its other characteristics to advantage to defeat them. (and once again "defeat" does not necessarily mean shoot down their opponents, but maneuver to complete the F-35 mission without being shot down.)
Hope this clarified.