NO, THE F-35 IS NOT DEAD.
I know I said I was needed to take a break but this one is a doozy. " THE US AIR FORCE JUST ADMITTED THE F-35 HAS FAILED " (Forbes) " Powerful lawmaker calls F-35 fighter jet a ‘rathole,’ " (Washington Post) This Country Is Spending $1.7 Trillion on Planes That Don't Work (Esquire) 10 Reasons Nearly Nothing Can Stop the F-35 Stealth Fighter (Sorry. This one is from notorious F-35 cheerleader Loren Thompson and his "pay-to-play" think tank) Okay... Deep breath... Slow down... Relax... First of all, (to paraphrase Mark Twain) reports of the F-35's demise are greatly exaggerated. The Lightning II has not been cancelled. Production has not been stopped. The JSF is still very much a thing and will continue to be well into the future. All of this started with General Charles Q. Brown Jr, the Air Force Chief-of-Staff, announcing a study to look into a "5th-Gen Minus" fighter to help replace the USAF's inventory of aging F-16s.