It's kinda weird how the F-35 just looks somehow dated and like a slob compared to e.g. the older (and cooler looking) F-22. Though perhaps "cool looks" is maybe not the prime factor in fighter jet selection...
This quote opens an essay on beauty by Paul Graham, http://www.paulgraham.com/taste.html
The urban legend about why the X-32 lost out to what become the F-35 is it having a stooopid looking mouth on it: https://i.imgur.com/1GW21we.jpg
If you were to write down all the ways in which you could measure an airplane—payload, fuel, ordnance, handling—and ask 100 pilots to rank which is the most important, I guarantee you that 100 out of 100 pilots would say “situational awareness.” By far. Not a single pilot in the world would say “turn radius.” Not one. Because the more you know, the more accurately you know it, the better able you are to make a decision.
In situational awareness, the F-35 is superior to all platforms, including the Raptor. I’d never been in an airplane that so effectively and seamlessly integrates information to tell me what’s going on around me—and not just from the radio frequency spectrum, but laser, infrared, electro-optical. That’s usually the first thing people notice when they get in the airplane. They know so much more than they ever knew before.
https://www.airspacemag.com/military-aviation/f-35-faces-mos...
With that said, if push came to shove, the electronics on the F-22 could be quickly replaced/augmented to either have a focused IRST ala the SU-35 or a 360 system like F-35's EODAS. Your argument is in line with "It would be difficult to restart the F-22's production line." Sure, but neither doing that or updating it would cost nearly as much as the amount of money that went into the F-35.
I think IRST wasn't made a priority because the US expects to have AWACS wherever they operate and the F-22s to shoot based on AWACS data without ever actively emitting themselves anyway. That or planes toggling radar one at a time and passing data via datalink to their squadron, which makes them fairly safe (at least that was the idea with datalinks).
EDIT: Thanks everyone, I wasn't aware that the F22 had a higher price and additional export restrictions.
One F-22 vs one F-35 is a contest obviously in favor of the F-22. One F-22 vs. three F-35s becomes a lot more ambiguous, particularly when we are not at war and there's no guarantee that any of these planes will do anything more than force projection.
(The F-35 very much seems like a peacetime fighter to me, and that may be exactly what the U.S. needs right now. History has shown that basically all your assumptions about how the next war will unfold go out the window once the next war actually starts. Under those conditions, it may make more sense to try out a bunch of new technologies, keep the defense contractors alive and the aeronautical engineers employed, contain costs, and build enough numbers that you don't get completely steamrolled in the early days of a war. Then when war actually does break out, you rapidly adjust and build the planes that you actually need, when you have real data about what's winning on the battlefield.)
Also, don't forget that nuclear weapons still exist. Nuclear powers shooting down squadrons of each others fighters to achieve "victory" does not seem likely.
Other controversial opinion: I think that the assumption that the next major war will be between nation-states is a likely candidate for one that'll go out the window. In my view, the next major war will be like Syria but on a global scale, with many semi-organized subnational groups duking it out in exceptionally nasty urban & guerilla warfare.
2. F22's are only fighter jets. F35 for better and worse is designed to do just about everything.
But to be fair, as the other comments have pointed out the F-35 is lower cost, a decent peace time machine and is has flexible configurations.
The F-22 also can't be sold as an export.
Given a volunteer military, and remembering their advertising in high school, they probably want people to feel as cool as possible joining up too.
I've always thought it was a shame the YF-23 wasn't developed into the role eventually filled by the F-35. It had a lower radar cross-section than the F-22, could supercruise faster, had better range, and with the deletion of the afterburners (not necessary for the revised role, especially when you can truck along at M1.8 without them) it could have opened up a lot of space for additional weapons storage.[0] And it was a long way to being a developed aircraft. Could have been finished much more cheaply than the F-35, no doubt.[1]
[0] Not sure of the CG shift implications, though.
[1] Not sure if those savings would have been eaten up by higher operating costs.
Quote I've heard attributed to WW2 pilots, but google isn't helping me with.