> I think the Ukraine war and Russia's poor showing has proved that in some ways the west is overestimating the capabilities of it's enemies.
That attitude is a recipe for overconfidence and failure, and is probably the biggest reason for Russia's poor showing in Ukraine.
Also, from what I've read, electronic warfare is one of the areas where the Russians have shown strong capability. It's a mistake to misinterpret "sucks at some things" as "sucks at all things."
Remember too that significant amounts detailed technical data for the F-35 have been stolen:
https://thediplomat.com/2015/01/new-snowden-documents-reveal...:
> Last week, Der Spiegel published a new tranche of documents provided to the German weekly magazine by the former U.S. National Security Agency contractor, Edward Snowden. The documents are the first public confirmation that Chinese hackers have been able to extrapolate top secret data on the F-35 Lightning II joint strike fighter jet. According to sources, the data breach already took place in 2007 at the prime subcontractor Lockheed Martin. A U.S. government official recently claimed that as of now, “classified F-35 information is protected and remains secure.”
> ...
> The Snowden files outline the scope of Chinese F-35 espionage efforts, which focused on acquiring the radar design (the number and types of modules), detailed engine schematics (methods for cooling gases, leading and trailing edge treatments, and aft deck heating contour maps) among other things. The document claims that many terabytes of data specific to the F-35 joint strike fighter program were stolen.
When designing military aircraft, it makes sense to reduce attack surface and avoid implementing exploitable features to address unusual scenarios.