The government provides the specifications and the manufacturers build the aircraft to match.
When the aircraft turns out to be less than suitable, the blame falls on the people who provided the specs, not the builders.
The F-22 and F-35 were the result of a competition for the next super duper stealthy airplane. The F-35 won.
Unfortunately, the idea of having one do-it-all airplane is strong, even though the concept is flawed.
If you have issues with the manufacturers selling airplanes to the military, then maybe you should do so serious work to understand the contracting process. All of the things you are probably railing against are the result of unions and politicians agreeing on what the military gets and what the military is allowed to repair/manufacture on their own.
In the end, what you're mad at is ALL caused by unions and politicians guaranteeing their own jobs, not the people in uniform.
I'm not involved in that process, but I read about it after seeing some rants about the cost of military replacement parts.
Unions? Unions are not the reason of why military spending is bloated in the US. We're talking about the problems of military contractors here, not teachers or police. Defense is not a heavily unionized industry at all. And the unionized workers that do exist in manufacturing have reduced size over the last 50 years while budgets have ballooned reliably.
You're also completely ignoring the massive role of lobbying and pork-barrel spending that occurs in the military industrial complex. It's pretty funny to fly through Dulles and see ads in the airport for missile systems, for example. These vendors love to use lobbying for tax development incentives and spread their programs across tons of states so it becomes politically unpopular to make any cuts. Is it smart for them to increase profit? Absolutely. Does it get us the best systems for our taxpayer money and benefit society? Absolutely not. So yes, I do consider these vendors responsible for their role in this mess or waste.
I get what you're saying about the DoD making bad choices in the requirements of the F-35, but it's laughable to act like Boeing, Raytheon, etc are just passive entities here. There is a closed ecosystem and the (one-way) revolving door between the military and contractors, and of course this leads to bloated and unnecessary programs. The DoD doesn't just draw up requirements out in a vacuum. The problem of bloated military spending isn't limited to this one plane and poor choices. We've had this problem for at least 50 years.
My original comment stands: great news for Boeing/Lockheed to sell more weapons for whatever is the replacement.
There seems to be a lot more discussion of UFOs lately; this makes me wonder if the traditional fighter jet is going to be obsolete sooner rather than later.
Or maybe radar is obsolete and so is its associated stealth techs.