You kind of wonder

You kind of wonder if aircraft companies that build planes for the military intensionally start out with a flawed plane like the F-35. It is not rocket science to think that they know after Billion have been sunk into the project, the gov wont want to drop it. Then the A/C companies can make further billions by improving it to make it squadron ready.

IMO they could make an excellent airplane from the get go if they wanted to. I offer as an example the F-8 Crusader. It was great from the beginning and needed little development to make it squadron ready.