Hmmm, your glass must be much much less than half-full if you think that re-designing a couple of components of a generator is going to be an insurmountable engineering challenge for the guys that put together the STOVL lift system.
I also think that 20 years from now showing up to the fight with nothing more advanced than an F-18 because the F-35 went a bit over-budget and got scrapped, when the bad guys are flying J-20 or PAK-FA will be a really rather bad and short-lived idea.
Guess we'll have to agree to disagree.