JSFfan
you should use your computer more, that story is 2 mths old
Whether the story is 2 months old, 2 weeks old or 2 days old is irrelevant, you missed the point completely. Perhaps you are unaware of the political atmosphere here in the US, being soooo far away, down under. You concentrate on the technical upside of the F-35 program, ignoring the political side that is fraught with potential showstoppers. Presently, the US Congress is on recess and they have yet to take up the budget of the US government going forward. Believe it or not, the F-35 is going to be part of this process and there isn't much good program news to believe it will float through the process untouched, no matter what you think. You saw what happened to the F-22 program and realism would indicate a reduction in spending for the F-35 program at a minimum.
Comparisons of the F-35 program to the F-16 program of yesteryear is fruitless from an acquisition cost point of view (everyone understands the F-35 is very much more expensive program) or whether the F-16 program had a tough sled (it did) for foreign countries to buy into the program. Perhaps you are not well acquainted with the layout of the Pentagon. On one floor there was a group that promotes sales overseas. On another floor there was a group that discourages sales overseas to protect advanced technology, paid for by American taxpayers. For sometime, the discouraging group ruled the roost and delays of sales resulted. I visited there and saw how it worked. It will be no different this time around for the F-35 when it comes to technology exportation.
So you stick to publishing the Lockheed promo material and from time to time I will bring the realism into the conversation apart from the technical virtues of the F-35 Lightning, whatever they might be, or not...
TD