Since Lockheed struck a deal with the government allowing them to no longer communicate the number of issues encountered on the F-35 program, news reports have

Since Lockheed struck a deal with the government allowing them to no longer communicate the number of issues encountered on the F-35 program, news reports have only been writing about how it has been the best thing since sliced bread. (Save for the mishaps happening from time to time..) Which is entertaining, because until that point (2021, if memory serves?) it was encountering an ever increasing number of critical issues needing resolving, a double dozen of which would be lethal to the pilot flying. The backlog stood at 800+ issues at the time. Some of the software issues were so serious that they were considered beyond salvageable at the time, despite having already gone through a full re-write from scratch cycle..