Airsound - That's a very useful document, because it effectively shuts up the people who believe that anyone in a uniform is invariably telling the complete, unexpurgated and unvarnished truth. We now know that they are under orders to say nothing that a LockMart salesman wouldn't say.
Must be tremendous for building confidence in the armed forces, ordering them to say that their kit's fantastic...
I dare say there's a whole lot more to the F35's performance than I'm aware of. But the very fact that there is such an instruction says that there's something wrong somewhere in the procurement system.
Whether or not the F35 is the right or wrong aircraft doesn't really matter; the instruction suggests that at least some parts of the procurement system (and I include politicians as part of that system) don't know what the right aircraft is for any particular role. In the long run that's more problematic than the performance or otherwise of a single aircraft.