Any cost savings have been annihilated by hideous budget overruns. The F-35 will be a money-loser without exception.
All this is aside from the fact that saving money on something that doesn't fucking work is pretty asinine.
Can they fire the gun yet without crashing the system?
Can the pilots actually use the VR helmet without getting motion sickness?
Has a smaller helmet been made so that the pilot doesn't get stuck against the inside of the canopy trying to look over his/her shoulder?
I don't believe it. Sure, that's how they sold it, and I understand the supply chain problems they want to avoid, but I don't believe a word of it.
Most anyone who heard an F35 and is posting publicly about it must have heard the plane in transit over land where they aren't permitted to cause sonic booms, and could have even been traveling very slowly.
The F-35 program is the biggest scam in history. The people in charge of it need to be put in jail.
coughSpaceShuttlecough
[okay this was glib, but there are some real parallels there, including trying to be all things to all people]
The F-35 is buggy, because its unprecedented, I honestly don't think it gets a fair shake, and I wish people would look at the long term cost savings vs the short term boondoggle (and it is certainly that.) Fleet maintenance is astronomical, the F-35 is build to address that; if you spread costs out of 30 years, the plane doesn't look quite as expensive. Since the government doesn't use GAAP accounting, all costs are realized up front instead of being depreciated out.
I really don't buy your story about being able to hear the jet a minute before it hits you. By the time you hear a jet flying directly to your position you are either already dead, or the plane is just about to pass over you. In your instance it sounds like the plane was no zeroing in on your position, but was just incidentally passing by...which is entirely different.