The 35 is designed to do everything but, as with all such platforms, will do nothing so well as mission dedicated platforms would do and probably not so well as its probably future opponents in the air and on the ground. Once the 22s and 16s are retired the likelihood of our aircraft actually being tested in the air rises sharply.
I hope they don’t plan on retiring the F-22 already! Good grief. I’d rather have a heavy F-35 and either an updated F-22 or a new air dominance fighter than the A-10 even.
Officer careers are made in the procurement of new programs not the maint of perfectly good assets.
Thats all you need to know