If F35 turns out to rubbish, we could always take a look at the Japanese F3.
The F3 is seriously flawed and doomed. Doomed I say.
How so? From the AvWeek website:
Airframe developers....have settled on something close to a 2013 configuration for the F-3 that emphasized endurance and weapons load over flight performance.
The F3 is intended to be a long range, high speed missileer designed to shoot long range ramjet missiles from internal weapons bays while in supersonic cruise. It is NOT designed for high energy maneuvering. The folks here have already conclusively proven (ahem) that anything that cannot stay with an F-16 in a close in fight is doomed and total rubbish.