F-35 propaganda disguised as a news article.

via National Interest.

Air Force Gen. Herbert “Hawk” Carlisle, commander of Air Combat Command, this week declared the F-35A fighter jet ready for combat. While many pundits and politicians have questioned the worth of this jet, the only people who know the ground truth are the pilots themselves.
A total of 174 U.S. pilots currently have been trained to fly Lockheed Martin’s F-35A Lightning II. The Heritage Foundation recently interviewed 31 of these former F-15C, F-15E, F-16C, and A-10 pilots. Each expressed a high degree of confidence in the F-35A, their new fifth-generation platform.

This article has filled my in box.  All the F-35 fan boys are pointing to this article as proof that the plane has finally delivered.

Awesome fan boys!  Do you feel swell?

Question before you start chest pounding.  Do you know who wrote the article?  The dude's name is John Venable.  Do you know who he works for?  He works for The Heritage Foundation.  Do you know what The Heritage Foundation is?  Its a quasi governmental think tank that leans toward what we've been told is conservative values.  They're advocates.  They're pushing for an accelerated F-35 buy.  Even worse?  National Interest clearly stated that the article was first published in The Heritage Foundation's in house magazine first yet no one seems to have followed the link to check it out.

This entire article is just another bit of fucking propaganda.  You've been deceived.

NOTE:  The purpose of the article is clear.  Check this part out.

In full production, the F-35A is projected to cost less than the four-plus generation Eurofighter Typhoon, the French Rafale M, or the latest version of the F-15K Strike Eagle.

The Pentagon and their sycophants are basically on their hands and knees begging for this airplane to go into full rate production now.  Even though we know that the upgrades to planes we already own will be prohibitively expensive. But the part that should worry the fan boys is this.

Concurrent development of the F-35A certainly has had its challenges, and the risks for delays and cost overruns should have been factored into the acquisition process. They were not.
Component, sensor, and airframe development were (and still are) all happening at the same time, and even small changes in the weight, size, performance, and schedule of any component could affect the weight, size, performance, and schedule of the entire system.

Venable is one of the biggest boosters of this program that I've seen...second only to Spudman and Ionosphere (they're tied)...and even he is saying that this program is not yet out of the woods.

Concurrency was a nightmare.  Procurement malpractice and will go down as two of the biggest failures of this generation of generals.  The first being their inability to defeat 40K ISIS savages operating in the open desert.