Well I'll answer here for Born2Kill 007's question in "Pic of the Day" thread.
About the F-35
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxDSiwqM2nw
Btw, is it true that stealth is that easy to detect? I know that it is overrated, but this much? And does this also mean stealth in ships is even more werthless considering better radars can be equiped on ships than on airplanes.
Stealth here means you have a very small radar cross section that you can be mistaken for clouds or birds or stuffs that goes through the radar operator's eye or the system's noise filtering. The US concept of stealth AFAIK, from what we know in "diamond shaped" and jagged-edge F-117A, relies on deflecting incoming radar wave, so the tracking radar won't get the same amount of reply ping. This requires the surfaces to be "clean" or no sudden oblique folds in the surface, like pylons or protruding antennae/probe. So it has to carry all of its munitions inside a "bomb bay." It can be briefly detected whenever it opened its bomb bay though. Also (plausible) when deploying its flaps or landing gear.
The plane is not equipped with radar or the radar activity can be passively detected. It is operational condition is restricted, because if it can be tracked visually, it will be useless. Lately, the US also used radar-wave absorbing paint and material. This requires special treatment, such as air-conditioned shelter and special maintenance procedure. Not all airfields are equipped with these facilities, so their base of operations is limited.
The F-22 and F-35 has an on-board multipurpose radar, means they can be passively tracked when they are using their radar. Since the plane is stealthy, even the most powerful radar that the enemy posses needs to:
1. get really close to bombard the object with enough radar wave, so the reflection can be more meaningful out of the absorption and deflection provided by the airframe design.
2. get even closer to "burn through" all the jamming noises from the F-22's ECM.
The range and power of F-22's radar is designed to be overwhelming, because it has to have the first look at the enemy, so it has bigger chance to score the first kill. F-35, which is not specialized in this, has slightly less potent A-A radar capability and maneuverability than F-22. But, since they are pretty confident at this stealthy thing, the F-35 is particularly not required to be agile enough in dogfight.
As you can see, F-35 are prone to ambush, and will less likely win a knife fight. But US military is always like "If you fought a fair battle, you planned wrong." So, they won't go to war if the situation prevents you from bullying the opposition.
Because of ridiculous requirements that Pentagon brass so loved, (like M2 Bradley IFV's requirement to be troop carrier/tank killer/scout vehicle/etc/etc/etc/to infinity) the F-35 (and to smaller extent, F-22) were modified heavily to meet the requirements. Now, it needs to have external pylons to carry more stuffs, because it will replace the multipurpose F-16.
Since it is limited to several base of operations, lack of range really hinders its deployment area, so it has to be able to lift external tanks. Then, it has to be able to do Harrier's stuff, so the massive fan in F-35B (the STOVL F-35) removes about 1/3 of the total fuel in other F-35 variants. This factors effectively kill all that "clean surface" doctrine of US stealth.
While they are sticking to that approach for decades, the enemy already tried numerous effective way to counter it.
And the biggest blow is, these are alright if the plane only costs like USD 30-40 million per unit. But now, it is about more than USD 100 million. I don't know whether the Lockheed Martin will recover all of the money or the governments will subsidize the original price. But for that amount of money, you'll get 2 Grippens, which does more than that when "bullying" opposition.