Another article: "And the program is nine years behind
the original 2001 schedule. All of this has forced the services to resume buying legacy aircraft like the
F-15EX and the
F/A-18E/F while extending the life of legacy A-10s and F-16s. With the prospect of
level Defense Department budgets in the coming years, it is not surprising to hear more and more service officials
talk of cutting the F-35 buy well below the planned 2,400."
The latest annual Pentagon testing report on the F-35 details a simulation facility that doesn’t work, a leaking dam of design flaws, and a program that is still vulnerable to enemy hackers.
www.pogo.org
I'm not quickly finding the original deployment schedule, but I know it wasn't to not be fully operational by 2021. I believe the F-15 and F-18 lines were supposed to be dead a decade ago. Yeah, jets wore out faster than anticipated, but if the f-35 was actually meeting goals, they would've increased production there as opposed to continuing to buy 40 year-old air frames.
At the end of the day we have a massive problem with government contractors at all levels. Everything costs more in the US than anywhere else in the world, be it military equipment or roads.