[TrapLord_Rhodo]

Being cheap is developing a next generation war-fighter that blows every other aircraft out of the water? next generation halo lenses, with advances stealth, manuverability, and rate of weapon deployment? With multiple different variety's and add ons to enable all weather and VTOL? What is cheap about the initial contraints of the project?

[dragonwriter]

The F-35 (more specifically, the JSF program out of which the F-35 was the successful contender) was conceived as a comparatively cheap multiservice, multirole fighter to reduce both initial development and ongoing operational costs by having a high degree of commonality between the conventional air force model, the CATOBAR navy model, and the STOVL marine corps model; It was also supposed to replace basically every US fighter and strike aircraft except for the F-15 and variants, which the F-22 would replace, and the F-22 itself.

As it turned out “do everything" and “be cheap” turned out to be less compatible goals than originally envisioned.

[bumby]

This is also part of the problem with the shuttle. It was forced to have many masters between the DoD and NASA