For years, the news about the most expensive conventional weapons system in US history, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, has been driven by its enormous cost, design, and schedule screw-ups. The Pentagon and Congress and the public have rarely spoken about what the F-35 would do, how effectively it could destroy an enemy’s air defenses, shoot down an enemy plane, or find and strike other high value targets.

Air Force Gen. Mike Hostage, who will command the largest group of F-35s in the world, recently sat down with me in his office at Langley Air Force Base to discuss what the F-35 can do in the first 10 days of war — within the constraints of what is classified. Much of what appears in the following story is drawn from months of interviews with dozens of experts in the government, the defense industry and academia to flesh out some of its more exotic and lesser known capabilities.

This is the second and final story in what we hope will become regular coverage about the F-35’s capabilities as it flies closer to production and is sold around the world to America’s allies. The F-16 changed how America and its friends planned to fight wars. It helped guarantee one of the most important fundamentals of modern warfare — clear skies for us and our friends so we could bring the fight to a more vulnerable enemy. The F-35 takes the place of the F-16 and also replaces the EA-6B, F-111, A-10, AV-8B, Italy’s AMX and the British and Italian’s Tornado. No other aircraft carries such responsibility for so many, nor has one ever cost so much.

LANGLEY AFB: If you want to stop a conversation about the F-35 with a military officer or industry expert, then just start talking about its cyber or electronic warfare capabilities.

These are the capabilities that most excite the experts I’ve spoken with because they distinguish the F-35 from previous fighters, giving it what may be unprecedented abilities to confuse the enemy, attack him in new ways through electronics (think Stuxnet), and generally add enormous breadth to what we might call the plane’s conventional strike capabilities.

So I asked Air Force Gen. Mike Hostage, head of Air Combat Command here, about the F-35’s cyber capabilities, mentioning comments by former Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz several years ago about the F-35 having the “nascent capability” to attack Integrated Air Defense Systems (known to you and me as surface to air missiles) with cyber weapons.

Hostage deftly shifts the conversation each time I press for insights on the F-35’s cyber and EW. He doesn’t refuse to talk, as that would be impolite and, well, too obvious.

He starts off with what sounds like a shaggy dog story.