Hey GAO: Fighter Gap Means We Should Buy F-35 Faster

I think the majority of the problem with the F-35 is that they wanted it to be the Swiss Army Knife of the skies. Everybody wanted to put every single stinking toy there was in it. And then were bewildered when the damned thing didn't work. On top of that, they wanted it to perform missions it was not meant to - CAS, namely.
If they weren't busy trying to make it an end-all, be-all platform, they could've gotten it into service a lot sooner to take up the slack for the F-16 frames it was meant to replace.