News is emerging that Israel is enthusiastically exploiting the fact they were the first to deploy US made F-35A fighters in combat by launching strikes in Iraq (archived). While the F-35 program has been an absolute boondogle for the US, for Israelis the F-35 program has allowed them to be the first to fly this particular stealth attack aircraft in anger. Doing so they enjoy the advantages of its stealth before the ongoing collection of radar data negates its present advantage over air defense systems.
While the US cut Turkey out of the F-35 program over the NATO ally's purchase of Russian made S-400 missiles fearing Turkish operation of the jets near Turkish radar pickets will generate Russian data allowing better identification of the F-35 as an air defense target, Israel's ongoing airstrikes on foreign soil are generating the same sort of data and incentivising the development of F-35 countermeasures. With the problems everyone else is having bringing their F-35's operational, it is possible the Israelis may be the only ones to enjoy use of the F-35 as a steath aircraft. Once again history rhymes.
20 years of development time and 1.5 trillion USD in IOUs burned so some Jews can bomb some warehouses in the desert.
One of the lulziest elements of the F35 debacle is that the piece of shit is designed to refuel through the "iron maiden" boom method (rather than the much more widely deployed, safer, easier to use probe-and-drogue method that uses canvas instead of metal mesh to guide the refuelling nozzle). Entirely avoidable, pointless misdesign that typifies pretty much everything about the F35, really.
Not all variations of the F35 use the boom. Just the F35A, because the US Airforce is a boom fleet because SAC was a thing during the days of bomber gaps. The carrier F35B and F35C versions use the probe-and-drogue like the rest of the world, because that's what the US Navy runs. Nevermind all of the export customers are probe-and-drogue fleets across the board and fly their planes from runways on the ground rather than from boats.