A plane that: - is outmaneuvered by any legacy fighter in the sky - carries less useful load than any legacy fighter in the sky - is underpowered - has a us

A plane that: - is outmaneuvered by any legacy fighter in the sky - carries less useful load than any legacy fighter in the sky - is underpowered - has a useless, unfixable gun - cannot fly high and fast because it starts peeling off its precious radar-absorbent coating - cannot be refueled by a truck that has been sitting in the sun, due to cooling issues - cannot be reliably be operated in hot & dusty environments due to risks of premature engine damage - cannot be flown by pilots below a certain weight (70+ kg, a problem for women) due to the risk of terminal, neck-snapping damage when ejecting - relies on an unwieldy, buggy maintenance prediction software that has already be re-written from scratch once, and, by the looks of it, will have to be re-written again - that has a service life of about 1/4 of the original requirement - has an operational availability of less than 60% - [..] (the list goes on an on..) cannot, objectively, be called a pretty good plane. No. At best, it can be considered a pretty good cash cow for Lockheed and its shareholders. A bottomless pit being endlessly re-filled with dollars in exchange of empty promises. Where it did succeed, however, is in being an excellent Trojan Horse. With all the unattainable promises it made, it lured in a few European countries, that, once it was clear the costs would sky-rocket, where in too deep to pull out. And all the cash that was wasted in the process was not used to fund/develop a competitor. Oh. And Lockheed got lots of valuable, free knowhow in the process, in exchange of construction promises that never materialized, because, you know, top-secret developments, leak risks of sensitive technologies, etc.. So win-win for them again.