The F-35 is a gilded turd. Sure it looks good on paper but why shouldn't it? It costs tend time that of proven aircraft it is replacing and its cost will mean it is procured in pitiful numbers. If we go to China we will lose in the air, for the same reason that the Germans lost to the Allies in the 1940s. Quantity has a quality all its own. The German jets were far superior to the German jets, but our old prop planes were still able to shoot them down in large numbers. Chuck Yeager flying a P-51 prop job, said it best, "The first German Jet I saw, I shot down." The Chinese will mob the handful of Navy F-35s that are not destroyed on their carriers when they are sunk. The surviving USAF F-35s that are not destroyed on the ground by SOF in the continental US will be mobbed by hordes of less capable Chinese aircraft. The F-35s could shoot down a dozen Chinese jets per aircraft lost and we'd still lose the air war through attrition. All wars are wars of attrition. The US Military seems to have lost sight of that fact. It seems that the Pentagon has convinced itself that its won all the wars its fought since Korea. That was a tie. Vietnam was a loss, Afghanistan was a loss, Iraq was a win, but a loss against the resulting insurgency. We had air superiority in all those wars. The next one we won't. So the Pentagon is operating under a self delusion. It is imposing on itself a limitation in numbers due to cost because it thinks technology will give it victory. Well, high tech hasn't won in the past when our technological superiority was lopsided in our favor. So why do they think we'll win against a numerically superior foe, with only a marginally less technologically inferior force? In the 1980s the Pentagon had it right. They bought a lesser number of high dollar fighters (F-15 and F-14) and a greater number of less expensive and affordable less capable fighters (F-16) to back them up. I guess the new generation of Pentagon flunkies are too hypnotized by expensive bright shiny objects and missed the lesson.