The F-35 Lightning: Jack of All Trades, or Master of None? 

In early 2006 I worked in the Public Affairs Department aboard USS Abraham Lincoln CVN 72. One of my tasks at that time was escorting a couple Lockheed engineers around the ship while we were underway so they could better understand the environment the F-35 would be operating in and the capabilities we had for servicing aircraft at sea. One thing which I remember clearly was their surprise at seeing flight deck crew members physically pushing aircraft around the flight deck by hand. Essentially, a number of flight deck crew would go up to an aircraft which needed to be moved and move it by pushing on the wings leading edges. The engineers immediately stated they would need to strengthen the wings of the Navy version to accommodate this practice. I still have the hat and F-35 pin they gave me as a thank you for showing them around the ship.

Saw one live at one of the Farnborough Air Show. Zoomed in, stopped, hovered, did a 360° on the horizontal and zoomed off again. Cool stuff

To be fair, the $1.7T figure is the through life cost of the aircraft and reflects operating 2,000 F-35s until 2077, including capital cost, fuel, weapons, spares, maintenance and wages.

this quote is ALWAYS used incorrectly. "A jack of all trades is master of none but it still always better than a master of one" people dont understand how much this aircraft if capable of. the F35 leaped years ahead of the market had to offer and it completely changed how air control is/will be achieved.

"A jack of all trades is a master of none, but oftentimes better than a master of one." Everyone forgets the second part of this saying.

PILOT: "F35: add lasagne sheets, milk and some recces pieces to my list" F35: "Lasagne sheets, milk and recces pieces, should I order those now"? PILOT: "F35: Let's not tempt fate, order once we've left enemy airspace"

As an aviation Officer, in my opinion the aircraft is overall outstanding.. not perfect.. but logistically and functionally outstanding which over time DOES save money with interchangeable parts and making maintenance and the logistics of supporting the aircraft much more efficient.

I used to work on AV-8B Harrier (the only foreign weapons system that the US military had accepted in more than 50 years), and that thing.. the F-35, is far superior and more flexible. It was a good choice and a smart investment.

The trick to being a successful military contractor is to employ people in as many congressional districts as possible.

One thing you didn't mention about the VTOL. An inherent weakness in the harrier is when landing it's a controlled crash and taking off it still requires a bit of runway. This is because of the vectored thrust. IF or WHEN the engine sucks up its own exhaust if causes a flame out situation and a stalling of the engine. When landing the last 30 to 50 feet are very fast due to this known issue. The side effect of the F35's shaft driven fan is by sucking fresh air from above the aircraft and pushing it below it effectively creates and air curtain that prevents the engine from sucking up its own exhaust.

The Pilot's helmet is more expensive than my house.

Along with everything that is said in these comments which i agree with, the internal bomb bay is such an insane feature. Every plane with external armament is extensively hindered compared to its empty configuration, but an internal bomb and missile bay on a fighter alone makes control consistency and usability leaps and bounds above contemporary aircraft

Some correction. They didn't yet spend $400B for the F-35 as of now. That $400B development and procurement cost of over 2,447 F-35(all variants). At the moment from what i recall reading they spend around $150+B for buying around 800 jets and its development. The $1.7T cost of the F-35 include the following 1. Development Cost 2. Procurement of 2,447 jets 3. Upgrades until 2070 4. Operational cost of the jets until 2070+(includes everything from salary of crews and pilots, spare parts and the estimated inflation to that date)

I'm sorry, but are you kidding me that the F-35 "has a less powerful engine than the Harrier"? The Pratt-Whitney F135-PW600 engine used on the F-35B has a maximum hovering thrust of 180kN, compared to around 106kN of thrust provided by the Harrier's Rolls-Royce Pegasus. Even without the lift-fan, the F135 generates 120kN of thrust, not to mention it could be further boosted by the afterburner in-flight. The F135 is actually the SINGLE MOST POWERFUL jet engine to have ever been mounted on a fighter jet.

Simon, you should look at the F-111. Many of the same issues with trying to get one airframe to do so many wildly different things at once and it costing MUCH more than simply developing more specialized airframes to fit the goal. With the F-111, the naval variant was canceled and resulted in the development of the iconic F-14 Tomcat.

The F-35 gets an extremely undeserved amount of flack. I love the F-35 and think it was an amazing plane and an amazing concept especially for the Marines, I mean that's a huge upgrade for me harrier. You got a Beyond visual range beast that is completely unmatched, and the funny thing is an F-35 is not designed to shoot down their planes, say it again for the people who don't understand LoL. It actually was replacing the F-117 nighthawk is its main purpose. A F-35 is mostly an attack plane, and it leads groups of at least three unmanned drones to penetrate enemy lines and sweep out air defense systems, so the fourth generation fighters and bombers can advance. It also is a superpowered advanced AI with the ability to do amazing electronic warfare against radar systems. The F-35 is a small one engine aircraft and has amazing range considering what it is, and people underestimate It's ability to hover in mid dogfight, that gives it a really tricky advantage at super low speed low altitude, because it can recover from a stall turn into a helicopter and shoot you down then fly off. I have been playing combat simulators for a long time with aircrafts that can hover, it gives you something else to think about. And the engine problems people complain about is really ridiculous, they just had to beef up to turbine blades after 12 years. And they were literally never even offline for maintenance, all they did is simply replace parts sooner than predicted. And the F-35 is about to get a huge engine upgrade it will have a XA101 Ramjet engine hybrid. It is a rebuild kit that drops straight into its existing engine casing.

A lot of wrong information at 10:33. The F35 does not have less thrust than the Harrier, it has nearly double. The best version of the Pegasus engine only makes 23800 lbf of thrust compared to the F35's 40000 lbf. These are both single engine aircraft.

I laughed but I wouldn't be surprised if "looking really stupid" were actually a determining factor. Bunch of military tough guys don't want to be flying around in a death machine that looks like a meme.

The pratt whitney company used to have a skunk works in south Florida, when i was a kid we used to hunt in a small preserve (corbett area) that shared a border with pratt whitney test facility. Relatively often in the evenings you would hear the roar of a jet engine and see a blinding light, shooting flames a couple hundred feet into the air. The test pad held the rocket motors horizontally and directed the exaust vertically into the air. You could hear and see the exaust from well over a mile away.

“Enlightened age” _glances at Afghanistan…_

Simon, the image at 7:51 is actually F22s in production, you can see the two engine compartments and neck down in the center. The 35 has a single central engine.

A good video would be on the Americas inter waterways. How they control all the rivers, including the mighty Mississippi River. With the use of lock and dams, dikes, and levees. Then look at how much product is shipped on river giving it a advantage over any other country for farming.

Heh, I love the snark and irony when you say, "enlightened age" while discussing a weapon of death and destruction!

I live by Luke Airforce base in Phoenix. And you can hear the difference when they are flying F-16/F-22/F35. The F22 is a loud beast, but holy crap, the F35 is an amazing machine to see in the skys and the sound is earth shattering.... LOVE IT!

Let me know when you find a military project that hasn’t had cost overruns and set backs. Trust me, I won’t hold my breath. The F-16 had so many problems in the beginning and yet it is the most successful jet fighter ever produced.

I love it when 'serious' media outlets cannot disclose particular items of a newly developed jet and have to fall back on spurious quotes from 'sources', to cover their lack of information, while SW just admits "they won't tell us" .... and we all go "That's okay, we still love your channels"

I just went to the air show at Tinker AFB and the F35 is pretty amazing in the air. It can do things with thrust vectoring that made people's jaws drop.

That feeling you get when you do a bit of research and learn that the F-35 is a dedicated ground-attack fighter like the A-10 specialized in destroying SAMs. Yet, it's so advanced that it can do everything else better than every other fighter. It is probably outclassed only in dogfighting by the F-22 and in ground-support by the A-10.

18:37 Ahh, fighter jet as a service, now that's a good business model

The F135 engine in the F35 produces nearly twice the thrust of the Pegasus in the Harrier. 40,000 lbs vs 23,000 lbs. the lift system on the harrier is more efficient than the F35 however it uses a high bypass turbofan which limits the top speed to subsonic. Lift fans are less efficient but mean you can use a turbojet engine and so go supersonic. To go supersonic in a Harrier you would need to develop plenum chamber afterburners to increase the exhaust gas airspeed.

F-35s are produced in part at the Lockheed Martin plant at JRB Fort Worth. I used to see them thunder past my apartment when I lived in Fort Worth, Texas. You really couldn't miss them because they're so loud.

I was on the USS Nimitz during some of the sea trials of the plane. It was amazing to see the power and speed of the craft.

When you consider that the US is selling this aircraft to other major allies of the US, such as australia. Who did not previously have, any sort of stealth aircraft. It is a massive boon.

Small note here but the F-35 was not intended to replace the F/A-18 Super Hornets instead it was supposed to replace the older legacy hornets like the A-D models. The super hornets are almost an entirely different plane and are designed to serve alongside the F-35

Having seen one of these take off from a carrier I can only say this video doesn’t come close to being able to show how cool it is when you first see this, or how loud it is. When it first sets off down the deck and then up the ramp it looks like it’s going straight into the water only to bounce back up and set off into this distance

That quote is actually "jack of all trades master of none is often better than a master of one" , it's a compliment.

The F-35’s jet engine produces about twice the thrust of the Pegasus engine in the Harrier

It's often said that with any project you have three aspects you can apply to it: speed of completion, quality of work, and low cost but you can only pick any two of them. With any project involving researching materials you can only pick one of those three options.

I’d love to see you do an in depth video on the F-20 ‘Tigershark’. According to many, an outstanding fighter developed from the F-5 Tiger. It was so good that it gave the F-16 a run for its money.

Well, it is a master of one thing, arguably the most important thing as it relates to the F-35’s purpose: it is a flying supercomputer

would love one on the F-22 as well if there isn't already. Probably another hard one with all the classified info but it'd be cool to compare/contrast

Funny how people often forget or simply don't know the full quote. "A jack of all trades is a master of none, but oftentimes better than a master of one."

People forget the full phrase! “A Jack of all trades is master of none, but often better than a master of one.”

The f-35 puts out almost 2x the thrust of the harrier. Not the other way around.

I used to assemble the forward cockpit cameras for the F35; daytime & night vision.

Suggestions: The Blue Angels. How jet fighter pilots are trained. The Navy hospital ships the USS Hope and the USS Mercy. The steel industry of Pittsburgh, PA. The California Mission system.

"People call into question the need for such a destructive aircraft in our 'enlightened' age" Well that didn't age well

One of my uncles worked for a while on this project when he still worked for BAe. His specialist area being engine fuel systems. He'd previously worked on the eurofighter, tornado and the harrier (though most of the time on the harrier was as part of his raf career until he joined BAe just as the first gulf War started). The aims of the f35 project were certainly admirable, if probably unrealistic knowing how military projects always tend to bloat, suffer delays and over spending. However, the f35 will eventually be the primary multi role fighter for most services using it, alongside the f22 in the USAF and UAVs as well as things like eurofighter in the RAF. The f16, a10, f/a18 and harrier will all have had to be replaced by something and rather than the cost of how things traditionally would have worked, each would probably have had a protracted development programme of replacement and each having decades of support, training and development. Potentially the f35 might over its service life save on some of these potential costs by having all the requirements in one design with support and training costs likely to be smaller over time. But time will tell with that really. A project to replace the eurofighter has of course already begun, with two potential outcomes, one being joint by airbus and the other by BAe for the RAF, they may eventually merge or remain split (to some extent this happened with eurofighter, with the French going alone for the rafale).

Common Affordable Lightweight Figher. LOL That seems like a million years ago now. We want a plane that will replace these 4 excellent planes" -Ok, what's the budget? "Well ideally it should only cost as much as any one of those planes did, but feel free to make it cost as much as all 4 planes if you need to." -Throw in the development budget for the Osprey and Apache and adjust it all to 2021 dollars and you got a deal.

People seem to forget that the capabilities are being kept a close secret. I promise they didn’t make a shittier aircraft 20 years after the last lmao

If you use the quote correctly, then it does paint the f-35 as it is. A jack of all trades is a master of none, but oftentimes better than a master of one. Fits its description perfectly imo

Thank you for giving the jet's range in nautical miles 🙌🏼 This sets you apart from many other channels as one who knows what he's talking about and who he's talking to.

I served on the first US ship to deploy with those. On one hand, looked really cool, on the other, the technician’s absolutely hated working on it

You know what's hilarious? Congress has tried to "cut costs" by unifying the branches' fighters before with the F-111 Aardvark. The Aardy was loved by the airforce after some kinks were smoothed out, but the Navy hated it, and so decided to keep its fleet of F-14s. When will they learn that every branch just needs its own aircraft?

Great video, as always, blaze boy, I live in NC, I can remember back in either the late 70s or early 80s Apache attack choppers, doing emergency landings in Charlotte

I know your videos aren’t very long on this channel and I find myself wanting more information on some of the technologies of the plane. Being a sapiophile I wanna know everything. This was an awesome video Simon, you have an outstanding team however I 100% think people like u so much because of your voice and personality. I love all your channels. Hope u can continue giving us great content for years to come!

How about an episode on Bagger 293? It is a very impressive machine, in the way of it being mind boggling in scope.

I wish you would have talked about the cost of the helmet and the tech...it's alot and very game changing

The F-35 will be a jack of all trades. However, it WILL be a master of one. It is the best strike fighter in the world, today. Right now. It gives us what the old F-117 did, a stealthy ground attack plane. The only two fighters in history that could have bombed Bagdad on day of Desert Storm at the F-117 and F-35. Nothing else in service had the range, stealth, payload and hardware to drop those guided munitions.

I remember providing tech support to a government official back in 2003, i had to ignore the document on the screen and was not allowed to use any screen capture software because the document was an F35 review /report / not for general distribution type of document. Was a cool experience for the second year of my tech support career. Edit: Qld State Gov, department of premier and cabinet tech support role

When you leave what appears to be a default title "F-35 Lightning Script" as the image for the thumbnail. RIP

Military machines are truly amazing... I just wish and pray they can see very, very little use...

I have no knowledge of the F35 contract specifically, but I do know these larger acquisitions contracts tend to be firm fixed price with incentive fees. So I would say its probably the opposite of what you said. Running over budget likely cuts into/eliminates their profit and running late loses them their incentive fees.

That's a nice and non-judgemental look at an aircraft many people love to hate. For now it seems that pilots love it, commanders are glad to have new planes, and only the taxpayers have their doubts. I'm into fighter jets but some of its advantages seem so abstract and complex that we really will not know how well it works until it's forced to the front line of a real war.

Some extra info about that programme cost is that the total 1.1 to 1.7 trillion is that the amount is what is expected until 2070, and has taken inflation into account, meaning the total cost is what it will be in 2070.

10:52 might be the first edit messup in the hundreds of Simon's videos I've watched that's impressive

What’s wild about the F-35 is that any country who buys them has to stay on the USA’s good side. Unlike Iran and their F-14s you can’t just keep F-35s flying with duct take and JB Weld… without access to the software suites required to maintain them they’re basically really expensive bricks.

The F-35 is superior in A2A because of it’s effective targeting range. About 30% further. It’ll get target lock on the f-22 before it comes up on radar. It can also transmit that targeting data to other F-35 aircraft. Meaning you can have one plane “take point” and guide all the smart munitions being fired from other positions. It’s exceptionally good at flanking, so despite the f-22 being faster and more agile in a traditional sense, it can’t fend off from attacks coming from multiple directions

The other misnomer is that Common part of the program name, as they are actually 3 different jets kind of shoved into a similar box. Sort of like the F/A-18A Super Hornet is an entirely different aircraft from the F-18 Hornet, except that was just a shell game of names to befuddle congress that they were funding an entirely new jet.

10:31 in what world does a Rolls-Royce Pegasus engine of the AV-8B Harrier with 23,800 LBF thrust have more power than the F35 with it's F135-PW-600 putting out 27,000 LBF dry, or 41,000 LBF wet? The F135-PW-100 in the A and C models is even more impressive at 28,000 LBF dry and 43,000 LBF wet, respectively. The F135 series may be the single most powerful afterburning turbofan engine made. The F22 Raptor's F119-PW-100 may be the second most powerful with 26,000 LBF dry and 35,000 LBF wet, but you get two of those with your plane. And of course there are plenty of commercial non-afterburning turbofans that make a lot more thrust than these. But those engines are HUGE!!! Edit: So it seems that the Russians have the most powerful afterburning turbofan engine that makes 55,000 LBF of thrust in full afterburner. This engine is what powers the supersonic Tupolev Tu-160 Blackjack. It's a faster and larger version of the US's B1-Lancer, the Bone.

Engineer here: I am surprised that everyone was surprised at the Dev cost. You want a widget that is better than most other widgets, that does more than most other widgets, and oh you want the cost per unit to be less than other widgets... This only happens 2 ways. Large scale production with extremely customized machines for the entire process, like Coca Cola machines to their soda can level of investment.... Or it needs a pinnacle of design. Add in new tech, and that equates to a really, really, REALLY expensive design. And to be fair, they achieved all the goals of that design. Though I do remember reading about the bid price and laughing, because the cost of the ECRs alone would blow that budget.

The A10 is still the best ground support aircraft out there. The F 35 would never be able to replace it.

Please do the De Havilland Mosquito. I don't care if it's relegated to Side Projects. The F-35 is a special plane. Not quite as good the F-22 but a damned sight cheaper. I wonder how Russia's 'Checkmate' will compare?

My uncle Roy worked on this plane after the Air Force forced his retirement twice; once from the actual Air Force mechanics corps., and a second time after he transferred to be a mechanic on the Thunderbirds. After his forced retirement, he was drafted for a government black project which he couldn't talk about for nearly 10 years. It turned out to be this plane. Today, when the family asks what he working on, he just chuckles and says, "The U2."

I saw one of these bad boys take off from the deck of HMS Queen Elizabeth when she first came home from the States with her squadron of F35’s. Another awesome video Simon. Good job 👍

that $1.7 trillion is expected to be the total cost of production, maintenance and spare parts for all f-35s until the 2070s. in context, it's really not the much for a cutting edge military.

Having had the "honor" of working on the JSF program while working for Lockheed, the aircraft is impressive. Nevertheless, many thought if you get on the JSF program then you'll be set until retirement. Thankfully I found other employment. Blood pressure went down 20 points!

GAO: "the F-35 will also replace the A-10" Everybody else: "NO!" Warthog: "Brrrrrrrrt"

To get a true perspective of the cost of the program, what were the total inflation adjusted costs added together of the programs the F-35 was meant to replace: F-16, A10, F/A 18, and AV-8B Harrier. I'll bet the F-35 cost wouldn't seem as exorbitant as opponents make it out to be...

Nice vide man. I appreciate your candor. It's good to see you laugh even if the subject is a bit sore.

Jack of all trades, master of none. Though oftentimes better than master of one.

A great video--as always, thanks--but also probably one of the first in which some of the background music really became distracting, even overpowering Simon's voice at times.

Like some have commented, the author is inaccurate in stating that the F-35 engine only provides 75 percent of the thrust of the Harrier II. However, when factoring in the F-35B much larger weight: 35000 lbs empty vs. 14000 lbs. its on-paper thrust-to-weight ratio is 1,17 vs. the Harrier's 1,67. Which, incidentally, is about 75 percent. I suspect this was what the author was trying to convey, but the sentence came out a bit wrong. However, this is only part of the story. As the author points out the Harrier looses some (not much) thrust when vectoring the nozzles. More importantly, the Harrier is prone to hot gas ingestion into the engine in hover mode due to the relatively hot air coming from the front nozzles. This can greatly reduce the available thrust (jet engines don't like eating hot air). So the Harrier uses water injection, provided by a water tank, to temporarily (about 90 second worth) boost thrust in special conditions, such as hot-and-high conditions. The F-35B does not suffer from this problem as the lift-fan produces a cold air stream which acts like a wall and prevents hot air from the engine nozzle from being re-ingested into the engine inlets. But in the end the Harrier II as a greater T/W ratio than the F-35B in a hover. The reason is fairly straight forward: The Harrier is a VTOL (vertical take-off and landing) aircraft. It has a mission requirement to take off vertically. The F-35B, however, is a STOVL (short take-off and vertical landing) aircraft. There is no requirement for vertical take-offs when going on a mission. It can do this, but only in a light configuration with little fuel, used mainly for short hops to reposition the aircraft in the field.

Speaking as one that literally lives next to the runway of AFB#4 (L/M FtWTx) you can not imagine the window shaking the vertical takeoffs and landing can do! How the house doesn’t just crumble at the next gust of wind amazes me. Where as this would usually be the reason for people to complain, I don’t. I’ve grown up in the area for 5 decades now and I assure you, it a minor inconvenience and not near as annoying as the B-52’s deafening air noise used to make. I accept this as the reassurance of my personal freedom. Plus none of the houses have crumbled when the wind blows.

We get the F35 but not the F22 Raptor? Come on Simon...

And once again the A-10 is laughing, "You can't kill me..."

Love your sense of humor and focus. Keep it up

PBS FRONTLINE did a great documentary on the process of deciding between the Boeing or Lockheed submissions for this new plane. Its a great doc, covering much of what Simon has covered here but more in depth and more critical of the decisions made at the time. Basically everyone involved in the process knew beforehand that neither plane would individually be able to best serve so many varied purposes, but the money was given by congress and The Armed Forces was more than happy to spend it all and more! Who the hell believed this plane could actually replace the A-10!?

I absolutely love all Simon’s nine channels. What’s next on the list of interesting things you never knew about?

03:16 This would be an opportune time to mention the Yak-141 which blueprints Lockheed & Martin bought in the 90's.

I'm near their training airbase - and compared to the noise and vibration caused by the F16s overflights previously - the F35 is a dream.

"Hey, Im going to design a guitar that is also a bass, drums, violin and vocalist." 20 years later: $25,000 Banjo.

Can I suggest these three planes as subjects for future Megaprojects videos? Eurofighter Typhoon McDonald Douglas Eagle English Electric Lightning

I waa fascinated when the prototype X-35 was in testing. Still think it is technically amazing. The idea, that there is a common jet for every branch is good. But it mostly ends in a compromise. If not, it will be very very expensive

I followed the Development when I was young and read so much about it and was fascinated by it and still am.

people say it was expensive because they think it was one plane, if you think about it... it was 3 different plane. the cost was 3x higher than normal one plane. maybe.

I love these stories.

The F22 has a much smaller radar signature they said. The size of a bubble bee? on you radar screen. That was or is a kind of scuttle but that I heard over the years.

I think what you meant with the engine is not thrust, but thrust-to-weight ratio, because as others have pointed out below, the F-35B has about 3,000 lbf. more thrust than the most powerful version of the Harrier. The Pegasus engine's thrust / the Harrier's empty weight is 1.68. The F135's thrust / the F-35's empty weight is 0.86 (because it can't use the afterburner for vertical lift). Even if you add in the extra "thrust" from the lift fan, the total thrust still gives it a ratio of only 1.25. In that particular respect, it is "less" than the Harrier. But that's an oversimplification, because that's *maximum* thrust generated specifically in VTOL flight, and neither engine can make maximum thrust in all situations. The trade-off that buys the Harrier the better thrust-to-weight ratio for VTOL flight is that the Pegasus has an enormous first-stage compressor that simply grabs more air than a smaller engine would. But, like the big engine pods under the wings of a civilian Boeing or Airbus passenger plane, the blade tips of such a large compressor face have to inscribe such a large circle as they spin that the engine simply cannot hope to go supersonic. The tips would go supersonic long before the plane did, shrouding them in a shockwave that cuts the effective size of the inlet. Consequently, the thrust it would otherwise derive from its huge first-stage blades drops off tremendously as the Harrier goes faster. You also can't use an afterburner on a Harrier to force it through the sound barrier, because it would melt the complex geometry of the rear part of the lift system. So a supersonic Harrier would need to use a smaller diameter engine to avoid Mach stall of the compressor, and would consequently have less thrust for hovering. Most likely so little thrust it couldn't hover. The F-35B on the other hand avoids that by having the enormous "first-stage compressor replacement" -- the lift fan -- completely separate from the engine. The lift fan's huge blades only run at near-zero airspeeds, as the plane lifts off, hovers, or lands, so airspeed plus blade speed doesn't result in the lift fan blades going supersonic. Once it's flying, the lift fan is inside the clamshell door and completely out of the airflow. Then the smaller diameter real first stage compressor can handle supersonic flight, because at the same rotational speed the tips of the smaller blades are covering less linear distance (among other effects that favor smaller diameters for supersonic flight). The end result: the smaller engine makes less thrust because it affects a smaller cylinder of air; f=ma, and m is smaller because there is less air in a thin cylinder of atmosphere bitten by the F-35's compressor face than the thick cylinder of atmosphere bitten by the Harrier's huge compressor face. But the F-35 can continue making all of that thrust up to much higher speeds because the blade tips won't be shrouded in shockwaves until much higher speeds. And with the tailpipe being straight when it's not hovering, instead of the permanent Y-shape of the Pegasus engine, an F-35 can use an afterburner to nearly double the dry thrust when needed. (The F-35 also loses ratio because it has more weight in things like bigger fuel tanks, and complex inlet geometry that slows and compresses the incoming column of air so the blade tips can go even faster before the air through them goes supersonic. Plus thick stealth paint, weapon bay doors, sensors, etc. That also hurts the ratio some, but it's less important than the engine diameter limiting its maximum thrust, while allowing it to maintain that thrust into supersonic flight) tl;dr version, the Harrier has a better thrust-to-weight ratio when hovering and flying slow, but the F-35 has a better thrust-to-weight ratio when flying fast. And has a *much* better thrust-to-weight ratio than the Harrier at supersonic speeds, because the Harrier's ratio drops to essentially zero when the compressor face goes supersonic.

Unless an actual war breaks out that calls for the use of the Lightning in combat, one will never truly know. At least the F-14 got to demonstrate its combat capabilities in the mid eighties.