Ok, shambles.
Am I the only one who is looking at whether Dave-B is going to survive the US Presidential Election? In a time when there are going to be big defense cuts in 2013 onwards (even if Romney wins, which I doubt will happen anyway). The choice seems pretty straightforward, esp. as the USMC are now going to be flying -Cs off CVNs; the -B is incredibly impressive, but the USMC ConOps are utterly illogical; no-one has been able to coherently argue circumstances under which a MEU / MAGTAF would go to war needing Day One stealth and the US wouldn't feel compelled to send a CVN.
So if the ConOps are bust, it's the most expensive variant that does least, is still on technical probation, and you've won your final election so there's no need to deal with USMC worries, what do you think you're going to do? If I were advising Obama, and we won in November, I'd bin the -B before Christmas and before any more cash is wasted on it (though it is clearly a massive technical achievement.)
And then get Obama to ring his main man Dave, and explain that he has a problem, but we can lease him some F-18Es cheep for PoW. Good thing that N-a-B and Engines are all over this redesign stuff.
Tragic doesn't begin to cover it.
S41