The F-22 is designed first and foremost as an air superiority fighter. The F-35 was intended to replace half a dozen wildly different aircraft with a single plane. That was a horrible idea right from the outset.
This is such a silly conspiracy theory. It may make sense for US congressmen to lobby for pork in their districts, but why would the Israeli Air Force invest in defective machines?
Their existing fleet of F-15 and F-16 fighters is getting pretty old. I have been a “fan” of the F-16 since I was a kid and I’m in my 40s now.
I think for political reasons they don’t have access to Russian or European aircraft and they probably don’t want Chinese ones. This is the first new fighter we have available to them.
It could be political reasons, or it could be that there are no Russian or European stealth aircraft. And it looks like Israel values the ability of F-35 to fly all the way to Tehran undetected [1].
No, F-22 is not up for export. Also, F-22 serves a specific role vs F-35 which is geared towards multiple capabilities. There are neither mutually exclusive nor substitute for each other.
Arguably it works well enough for the Rafale. But it is an older plane with less specifications constraints, designed mainly for a single small country, and still the development up-to real usability took an insane amount of time (first prototype flight in 1986, really operational since a few years according to former pilots, and still missing some capabilities of former platforms in some roles).
Right now the F-35 is simply not ready, but I'm not sure anybody seriously expected it to be? Comparing the timescales, we should check again in 15 years, or if it goes really fast maybe at least 5?
Now specifically the software dev history of the F-35 is an interesting story..
