Well, I would disagree.
Again, if you look at the American concept of a high-low mix of an air superiority fighter, on the low side is primarily an attack fighter but with a dogfighting capability. For example, in the U.S. Navy you had the F-14, the Tomcat, which was the heavy air superiority fighter with a targeting radar. That can pick up something way out there and fire a missile at it and remain dominant in the air. The F-18 was the smaller aircraft that did the general purpose things.
In the situation now, the American concept was that the F-22 would be the air superiority fighter. Certainly the evidence from the exercises I've looked at in Elmendorf Air Force Base--and in fact I spent a couple of days there talking to the F-22 pilots--was that at the end of it the F-15 pilots said they really didn't want to play any more because they couldn't find the F-22s.
If you have a requirement for an air superiority struggle, an air superiority phase, then you have to have that big heavyweight fighter that has the stealth capability. If you don't have stealth capability and you're going to be facing a Russian T-50 or a Chinese J-20, you're sending your pilots up to die.
In that sense, I think the decision to go for the F-35 was a case of there being no other alternative. There is the F-22, whose line is closed, and the Americans won't sell it outside the United States anyway. There is the 50 PAK FA, which is Russian, and I don't see that we've ever bought Russian equipment before, and the J-20, which is the Chinese one, which again has not been a normal supplier of technology.