It says right in the article ~200 a year. The base scenario in recent war games, the US lost 270 aircraft total, of which 206 were USAF. Japan lost 112, Taiwan's air force effectively ceased to exist. Across iterations, Air Force losses ranged from 168 to 372(mostly on the ground)in a fight with China over Taiwan. Those are substantial losses but assuming all the losses were f35(they were not) even at current non wartime production rates the United States could replace that in a few years time.

Also the war games showed that when LRASM supplies were depleted, the f35 became the primary anti ship and strike asset as it was one of the few aircraft that could fulfill the role and survive.

Yeah, you're not producing 5000 a year.

But it's a bit irrelevant because we couldn't produce enough pilots either -- the training pyramid means you can only graduate so many new pilots each year, capped by the number of instructors at each level.

There is a similar problem with drone pilots -- it took Ukraine and Russia years to scale up and get to the current level of skill. However, training drone controllers is cheaper because the aircraft cost nothing.

More than any other non wartime fighter in recient history. and if war breaks out we can produce a lot more once we gear up factories - as every other war needed-

They delivered 191 last year. So roughly 1.5 days per plane currently?