"The F-35 is a Turkey."

A member of the "Fighter Mafia", Pierre Sprey worked in the development of some of the USAF's top aircraft like F-15, F-16 and A-10. He became somewhat famous in later years for his criticisms of the military bureaucracy in what he referred to as the Pentagon's "self-licking ice cream cone." Sprey died in 2021 but his legacy lives on, and where we are now with the F-35 in 2023-24, the true subsidized prices are probably a lot closer to what he predicted than the official headline.
It'd be a worthy project I'd like to start to make a new D or E model out of the C which is imo a decent plane/platform given features like larger wings and reinforced undercarriage. That said, the worst thing about all this isn't the cost overruns, it's the policy. It's what we do with the damn things. It's a paradoxical love-hate relationship I have with planes. I remind myself it's not the planes' fault, e.g. the Japanese jets are innocent enough.
Like every other issue, if someone is being attacked in today's world, they must be right.