That's what DDG 1000 led to and it's b8llocks.
Don't hold back, Mr Boffin, tell us how you really feel.
The fact is that requirements tend to compound themselves. If I want a fast car that is fun to drive I can buy an MX-5 Miata. If I want to haul the kids to practice, a GM SUV will do fine. If I want something that does both it's a Porsche Cayenne.
In the same way, fighters have historically become more expensive as you add a new requirement without taking away any of the old ones, production rates have fallen accordingly, and the corresponding collapse in force size has been mitigated by keeping jets in service longer. This has been a trend since the 1950s.
However, at the same time, the aerospace industry has changed. In the 1950s, aerospace led in almost every technology it used (materials, propulsion, electronics) and by aerospace one meant military aerospace, because commercial aircraft were, even then, a sideline. Hence the "weapon system" approach in which every component was specially developed and managed to schedule.
The question is whether that's appropriate today, or whether developing a weapon system should be a matter of harvesting the best technology from commercial aerospace and other industries, and developing only what you have to from the ground up.
That will help, but the fact still remains that adding stealth, STOVL, and integrated LPI sensors to a basic F-16 replacement was going to lead to a heavier and more costly airplane. JSF was an attempt to prevent that happening through high-rate production magic and new structures and subsystems, and so far it has not worked.