Good to see Martin Rosa getting some visibility - I've known him for some years - he really knows his STOVL stuff, and has made major contributions to the UK's JSF effort.
JJ - looking at VLAs and possible flight control law optimization is EXACTLY what the team need to be doing to get the best out of SRVLs. If they go down this route (and I'm a proponent of it) a good VLA is a must for safety and best sortie rate. The flight control 'tuning' being described could well be applied to other JSF scenarios - it's required to do land based RVLs for the USMC as part of its basic requirement set.
The old 'it's better to stop and then land, than land and then stop' is still good, but how about 'It's better to slow down to a near crawl then land, than land at 140 knots and then hook a wire to come to a halt'? Not as snappy, but worth thinking about.