Weekend F-35 entertainment

Below is my comment at the end of a rather silly article which is a total indifference to what is real.

The above would be a great article if: it had some relevant facts; was based on research of the current and past situation of the F-35 program; and, wasn't just a lazy, total indifference to what is real. The author ignores or just doesn't know, that the program--in order to be affordable--had to go by the original business plan of high-concurrent production. A business plan that the current DOD F-35 project boss Admiral Venlet has stated is failed. Then there is the F-35 (then Joint Strike Fighter) Joint Operational Requirement Document or "JORD". Composed in the 1990s and signed off on at the beginning of the last decade, the JORD assumed that there would be hundreds of F-22s around to do the heavy work. We all know how that turned out. The fact is, that the F-35/JSF JORD was always at risk of being obsolete and now, with F-35 IOC of 2020..2021...2022...it is almost certain. The F-35, as delivered will be obsolete against the threats for anti-access work. Just as bad, for any other kinds of threats, current aircraft designs can do the work better/cheaper. And that assumes that the F-35 gets over its massive development costs and engineering problems. Hoping that is at this time a faith-based effort of no value. The carrier variant is at severe risk of not trapping on a ship. That design, and the conventional A model are design-gelded because they have to meet B-model STOVL commonality in the airframe. A real mess that has produced a family of jets with little-to-no weight margins. Advanced? Hardly. A flying piano? Most certainly. Interesting too, cost of operating the jet per hour is now up around $35,000. As an aside, the Super Hornet is about $18,000~20,000 per hour, The Saab Gripen? $5000 per hour. In any event: maybe instead of feel-goodism, the author may want to invest in some research on the topic.