Re: 'Use-Case'?
The F-35 is not really meant to blow up grass huts and bomb "benighted natives", its job (and I really hope it never has to do it) is to go up against a modern 21st century air defence system and survive. The A-10 Warthog is a single-seater expendable airframe designed to use up US National Guard pilots in West Germany facing ZSU-34 cannon and SAM-7 man-portable missiles in 1980 or thereabouts as the Red Army stages its road race to the Atlantic ports. The Warthog has to get in close and personal to bayonet its adversaries with its BFG, meaning it comes within the range of THEIR AA weapons, even crude ones such as heavy machine guns and light rapid-fire cannon. The Warthog pilot is trying to fly the plane at low level, dodge close-range incoming AA fire and keep the BFG on target properly at the same time which keeps them rather busy as you can probably guess.
The F-35's mission facing an air defence system worthy of the name is to get well forward into the AD radar envelope without being detected (that stealth thing), detect threats (the massive sensor and comms suite it's fitted with) and provide information to guide missiles such as Brimstone fired from fifty km behind it by ammo mules like F/A-18s and Typhoons into their assorted targets (to begin with the air defence systems and launchers that are stopping the mules from getting forward without getting blown out of the sky). It's a sniper weapon so it's not fitted with a bayonet mount unlike the Warthog's stupid BFG.
Using F-35s to incinerate grass huts is purely to pass the time until it has a real job to do.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
