Original quote by John Farley:
In my view it is not a 'liitle awkward' but plain wrong. The reason why the F35 should be a single engine design is down to engineering facts not "modern engineering is so advanced".
The engineering facts are that if you can fit a single engine that has enough thrust to meet the spec the aircraft will be safer (in respect of engine failure) than a twin design of the same total thrust.
I respectfully disagree with your statements here.
The F-35 premise going in that one could design a three service aircraft where only one service required VTOL or STOL using the same airframe was erroneous. The result of this was an aircraft design that
required one engine because of the lift fan placement location. In fact, this lift fan feature caused the fuselage to become "fatter" to preserve the ability to carry armaments internally to preserve stealth characteristics that actually became compromised because of the resulting fuselage design. Also, the area rule became compromised, adding to drag and resulting in the F-35 being underpowered and lacking in speed. It will probably require two engine upgrades to increase thrust level overcoming the drag penalty.
Had the airframe been designed around only Air Force and Navy requirements, you would have seen a two engine aircraft, pencil like fuselage, plenty of speed and un-compromised stealth characteristics, but smaller and more agile than the F-22.
TD