You write that, and literally quote my point about F-35 making deep strikes against dense air defense possible in the very next sentence.
Both Russia and Ukraine learned to avoid concentrating forces, so what are you going to strike? Use an F-35 to attack a single Jeep with a mounted machine gun? F-35 has limited range and carries very limited armament, so you can't just carpet-bomb everything. At some point, you'll need to use much less survivable heavy bombers.
And if there are still some GBUs left after all that, the Kremlin and even the bloody Mausoleum.
And if these vaunted Russian IADs can't stop Ukrainian drones with a RCS the size of a barn, they stand little chance against a stealth fighter.
The issue with stealth fighters is that they have nothing to do. The enemy can launch barrages of drones from hundreds of kilometers away, outside the F-35's effective range. Or if you're moving ground forces, they'll be attacked by mobile units armed with short-range drones, also making F-35 less than useful.
That's also the reason why Russia right now is at a full stalemate. Its only semi-working strategy is to filter infantry through killzones that can be tens of kilometers in depth. Russia can easily bomb Ukrainian positions with gliding bombs or missiles like S-300. But there's just nothing to bomb, Ukrainian army is spread out.
> bridges, dams, power plants
A war crime, btw. Bridges and dams are also notoriously hard to destroy.
> The heavy B-2 bombers are themselves quite survivable
They are, but less so compared to lighter aircraft.
