No Mr Lee (who is not a Russian troll, so Brat will have to do without).
If the coating - Camrex or the new metal-based one for the F35 VL landing areas - has defects when applied, it can deteriorate with no VL. There are a number of things that might cause that - contamination or incorrect roughness of the steel surface or primer, less than ideal environmental conditions (Rosyth is a lovely place, but can be driech as they say) even in a tent, bad batch of coating itself, lots of things. High performance coatings and application isn't like going to B&Q you know, particularly not for ones that are newly developed - you have a learning experience to go through. Re-coating of flightdecks is normal business - every time a CVS was in Portsmouth for upkeep, you'd see the flightdeck tent going up within a fortnight, but that doesn't fit the sky is falling narrative, so people try to ignore it.
Now - if you were going stateside for high-profile trials with the new jet, would you :
a) Go across without making sure the deck was in perfect condition to conduct the trials, despite having a preceding upkeep period in which you could ensure this? Or
b) Do the sensible thing and if there are patches of degraded coating, make them good, particularly in a convenient upkeep period?
Can we take it you're in Camp A?