Originally Posted by Engines
The F-117 would actually be a really bad place to start if you wanted a fighter.
I over-exaggerated a bit here, too.
The F-35 is, as the title says, a 'strike fighter'. The customers never wanted a pure F-16 replacement, but an aircraft that could attack in a high threat environment, and defend itself as required. Personally, i believe that it should be the 'F/A-35', but there you go.
And this is probably the fairest F35 assessment I've seen so far and would like to see something like that come from LM, instead of superlatives across the board.
Might do wonders for their credibility and deescalate animosity their
PR developed towards the public, so far.