Sure, and it probably has it's place, but what war are we supposed to be preparing for? I've come around to some of the other comments in this thread that point

Sure, and it probably has it's place, but what war are we supposed to be preparing for? I've come around to some of the other comments in this thread that point out that we spent a lot of time preparing for the last war, which got us caught with our pants down in OIF/OEF. It's probably wise to analyze the F-35, warts and all, in that context. A lot of the criticisms I see seem to bake in this assumption that it would do very poorly in a COIN type war. I don't exactly agree, since by the time I left AFG (2013) it was mostly drone, F-16, and B1 support we had. I never saw a single A-10. Lots of little birds, but that's it. So if all we need the F-35 to do is drop some GBUs it seems it'll probably be able to do that at least as good as everything else. If we're actually trying to prepare for a near-peer adversary, I'm much more concerned with the vast suite of electronics on this platform than I am with it's ability to dog fight. What use is dog fighting in a early/mid 21st century war? If you're trying to dog fight I think you've already lost. As the US has dominated the sky (and the sea) for the last half century our near-peers have optimized on that they are good at, and what we are not. The Russians with more and more advanced missile technology, and the Chinese their cyber weapons - neither of which the F-35 has anything to do with countering, at least explicitly, and with the latter seems uniquely vulnerable to. But yes, I agree, "take this huge cannon and weld a cockpit, two engines, and some wings to it" made for a pretty cool aircraft.