That's a massive exaggeration at best. The F-35B variant borrows the lift fan design from the Yak-141. That's a single feature of a single variant of an aircraft that has a half-dozen other completely unrelated features. The Yak-141 didn't have helmet-mounted displays, it wasn't stealthy, it didn't have the new combat information management systems, it wasn't built out of modern composite materials, and so forth.
Would be quite a feat to have all those things in late 80s, don't you think? :-) It's not an "exaggeration" The planes even look similar, and Lockheed got $1.5T in government money for a few million they spent bribing government officials in Moscow.
> Would be quite a feat to have all those things in late 80s, don't you think? :-)
The F-35 has them. The Yak-141 didn't. Therefore, it absolutely is an exaggeration to say the F-35 was "lifted wholesale" from the Yak-141. Two of the three F-35 variants don't even have the lift fan!
