You have misunderstood. I said the Lightning was a brilliant design. A brilliant point design, but brilliant nevertheless. IF it later failed to meet real world operational needs, that was not the fault of the designers and builders, but of the government folks who set down the requirements. The same is true of F-35. IF it fails to meet real world operational needs, that's not the fault of the designers and builders. It is the fault of the several governments who set down the requirements.
This sort of thing happens every day in the world outside aeroplanes - there's a sort of negative spiral between customers of a service and suppliers of it where the customers accept only the most optimistic of quotations based on the wishlist of today and there is no career future for anyone in a supplier who might want to point out the inadvisability of any part of the deal.
The customers are really to blame - they determine who gets the money and their greed prevents them from being sensible. On the other hand I never liked the people I've had to deal with in previous companies whose job it is to provoke that greed.