There was a time when the Pentagon’s biggest weapons program, the F-35 fighter, was assailed on all sides by critics. Those days are long gone. Today the program is a smashing success, and 2020 looks likely to be another step forward in the plane’s rise to dominance of the global market for tactical aircraft. Nearly 500 F-35s have been delivered, the price of each variant is falling, all of the key performance objectives are being met, readiness is rising steadily, a thousand pilots have been trained, and nine nations are operating F-35s on their home soil. As production and performance risk have been retired, it has become increasingly difficult for critics to find anything to complain about. I have written a commentary for Forbes here explaining why 2020 is shaping up to be another banner year for the F-35 fighter.
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