Who cares? Air-to-air combat is exceedingly rare these days, and in the very near future no piloted aircraft will be able to keep up with a drone anyway (smaller, lighter, able to pull G-forces that would black out or kill a human pilot).
Meanwhile the F-35 is a fiasco for US and NATO force projection. The whole point of modern weapons - ugly and expensive as they are - is that they're supposed to be so intimidating you barely need to use them.
The F-35 fails to continue that tradition. The political consequences are going to be a lot more significant than the military ones.
Do you think we're going to have a shooting war with China or Russia before 2025? Because those are the only countries that can come close to challenging US air superiority.
Everyone that paid for the promises that it could do all this stuff.
I just don't see why people harp on this one stupid-expensive plane when there's all kinds of other stupid-expensive junk we waste money on.
It's like somebody burned down your house, but what you're really mad about is that they burned down the brand-new tool shed out back.