Cool pix!

SU-57 production vs F35 production...

 

That poster gives a false impression of where nations stand with relation to 5th Generation fighter strength. Ongoing issues with the F-35 make nations relying on them actually weaker than the raw numbers would indicate. If Russia has 16 Su-57's and an 80% ready rate (the US minimum standard) they'd have 13 aircraft available where Japan with 23 enjoys mere parity not 40% more aircraft due to the F-35's poor ready rate.

Here is an article from Business Insider explaining many of the F-35's issues, which you would not expect from an aircraft costing $100 million per copy.
F-35 Fighter Jet Problems Affect the Whole US Military Aircraft Fleet (businessinsider.com)

Also, check these out. I don't know who the bigger villain is, Lockheed-Martin for bending over the American taxpayer or the DoD project managers and politicians that allowed it to occur. I think the DoD personnel that agreed to these terms, military or civilian should be prosecuted.
We (the American taxpayer) footed the bill for all research and development costs. Lockheed-Martin retains rights to all data, software, and a proprietary relationship with the spare parts supply chain. The Airforce became concerned with the over $37,000 per hour sustainment cost! (actually, they're trying to get the per hour costs down to $25,000. per hour by 2025) They've begun to "negotiate" with Lockheed-Martin about revised terms. We need to suspend further purchases and start looking for alternative defense contractors for future spending.
While the F-35 was supposed to be easier to maintain, lack of spare parts (Lockheed-Martin, controls the subcontractors), a flawed ALIS maintenance software system, and the need for many maintenance tasks normally done in house by the military to be provided directly by Lockheed-Martin, because Lockheed-Martin doesn't share the data though the US DoD paid to develop it.
In fact, the ongoing costs of fixing issues with the aircraft, sky high sustainment costs, poor availability rates and issues with lack of ability to perform many maintenance issues in house, has Congress and the services, cutting back on the original projected purchases of F-35's. So, we'll end up with significantly fewer aircraft at a higher project wide cost.
Some highlights from a Breaking Defense article:
"As Fick explained, the original F-35 upkeep agreement put Lockheed largely in charge and possessing most of the rights to maintenance-related data."

"The issue of data rights in particular has bedeviled the F-35 program almost from the get go on a number of fronts. It affects the services ability to obtain spare parts faster because of vendor lock in the parts supply chain and stymying DoD’s efforts to get a handle on the Lockheed Martin’s bug-ridden proprietary maintenance software called ALIS (Autonomic Logistics Information System.)"

“The initial philosophy of the program, which was a total system performance responsibility effort led completely by Lockheed Martin, so, there are a lot of things that we didn’t ask for …. that perhaps in a program that had started in a different, way we would have asked for, and taken delivery of those pieces of data,” he said."
No shit Batman.

ALIS-Air Force Tries To Fix F-35’s ALIS - From A Big, Broken Box To the Cloud - Breaking Defense

From a GAO report on the aircraft, the initial F-35 program was supposed to meet the US military standard 80%+ ready rate for aircraft. What did we get?

"F35 Mission Capable Rates Have Improved since 2019 but Still Fall Short of Program Goals We found that the F-35 program has improved the F-35’s mission capable rate—the percentage of time during which the aircraft can fly and perform at least one of its tasked missions and full mission capable rate—the percentage of time during which the aircraft can perform all of its tasked missions. Specifically, the U.S. F-35 fleet’s average annual: · mission capable rate increased by 10 percent—from 59 percent in fiscal year 2019 to 69 percent in fiscal year 2020; and · full mission capable rate improved by 7 percent—from 32 percent in fiscal year 2019 to 39 percent in fiscal year 2020. Although there have been improvements in both rates, both still fall below the warfighter’s minimum and objective performance targets, as shown in figure 2.1"

So, we're impressed that we improved the mission capable rate from 59% to 69%, well short of the military standard. What is more telling, while they can perform "some" missions 69% of the time, being fully mission capable is only at 39%! A big difference, Fully Mission Capable means it can perform all designed mission functions, Mission Capable means it only has to perform one or more of its designed functions.

From Forbes: The U.S. Air Force Just Admitted The F-35 Stealth Fighter Has Failed (forbes.com)

Engine issues: Engine issues have already cost an additional $38 BILLION in costs, enough to buy another 380 jets. The GAO says in a few years sustainment costs for the F-35 will exceed the total aviation budget for the Airforce, Marine Corps and Navy.
Then there is the current question of upgrading the P&W F-135 or going with GE's, AETP XA-100 engine. I don't trust Lockheed-Martin's opinion since earlier program decisions pushed by them has resulted an many of the aircrafts issues today. To be fair Pratt and Whitney warned that procurement of spares at a rate of 12% of aircraft was not optimal. Other aircraft models require a larger percentage of spare engines to operational aircraft. With the F-35 Lockheed-Martin convinced the DoD to only acquire 12% spares, this was in order to hide the ballooning costs of the program, initially 200 billion but had reached 406 billion by early 2021. The low number of spares added to a more frequent replacement of the engine than planned and actual engine issues has hamstrung the program.
Pentagon rethinks F-35 engine program, will upgrade F135 (defensenews.com)

Lockheed-Martin (due to its proprietary data lock) is tasked with providing, inventorying, maintaining and tracking F-35 spare parts. Here, over 1 MILLION parts lost or unaccounted for, why doesn't the DoD just fire these turds? Answer, they own too many US politicians.
Auditors: Over 1 million F-35 spare parts lost by DoD and Lockheed (defensenews.com)
“Lockheed Martin manages F-35 spare part inventory in compliance with contract requirements,” the company told Defense News. “We continue to partner with the Joint Program Office to increase insight into spare part availability and support fleet readiness.”

Supersonic speeds could cause big problems for the F-35′s stealth coating (defensenews.com)

A bunch more stuff, but this is enough for one sitting.

 

Hidden engines…low heat signature from the ground…May need stealth to refuel in hostile territory…very expensive though…

 

No way…

 

I love it! Very cool. One thing I have never understood is why all radial engines have an odd number of cylinders. Like five, seven or nine. Larger radials use multiple banks (basically two engines with a common crankcase and crank), i.e. a fourteen cylinder is two sevens, and an 18 cylinder is two nines, all the way up to the 28-cylinder Wasp Major, four banks of seven.

 

I'm no engineer, but I suspect that it has to do with spacing clearance. Take a 3 cylinder radial and try to make it a 4 cylinder, it would be like two boxer engines opposing each other. Crank geometry would be impossible.