Defense News asks the question. Where was the F-35I in the strike on Syria?

via Defense News.

With the acknowledged benefit of 20/20 hindsight, some in Israel are wondering where the F-35 was.

“They were sure the F-16I could easily survive the environment, as it has done so many times before,” a retired Air Force major general told Defense News.

Another former officer surmised that the weaponry Israel used in that initial strike on the T-4 airfield in central Syria was not yet integrated into the weapons bay of the F-35 stealth fighter. “If it was determined to use our own special weapons for this particular scenario and this specific formation, what good would it do to hang it under the wings? You’d lose the stealth,” the officer said.

The Israel Defense Forces, or IDF, refused to specify which missiles were used in the initial attack on the Iranian command-and-control trailer, but multiple sources point to the Israeli SPICE, an autonomous, all-weather, precision-attack weapon that the Air Force is well-practiced in delivering at standoff range.

In conjecture officially denied by Conricus, the IDF spokesman, one officer suggested Washington may have discouraged or even vetoed Israel’s use of the F-35 at this point in the multinational program out of concern that Russian and Iranian specialists in Syria could gather information on its radar-evading capability and other characteristics.

Story here 

I'm not buying it.  I thought more of the IDF than to declare an airplane operational and not have it ready for war.

Alas it seems like they've been bitten with the same bug as as the US military.