For an article that came out before this recent press rollout began, try this one: "The F-35 Is a $1.4T National Disaster"
article: https://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/the-f-35-14-trill...
HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16869679
While at it also found some stories about F-35 helmet targeting systems, if it's anything like BAE Striker II for Eurofighter [3]
1. https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/navys-version-f-35-ha...
2. https://militarymachine.com/f-35-helmet
3. http://home.bt.com/tech-gadgets/future-tech/inside-baes-stri...
Could also be a paid PR campaign if you're the cynical type. 50/50
Most likely a bit of both, you are not alone in noticing the pattern.
A trillion dollar plane that's cutting edge probably has a pretty decent opposition market budget behind it from adversarial nations, and it's not very difficult to assume that these articles are part of that somehow.
One addition you have a lot of readers hitting one story, google or someone notices and ... someone(s) is going to be exposed to that topic more even if only because Google decides to push it on some of those folks.
1) Once you've noticed something, you tend to notice it more often.
2) Novel (or uncommon) articles on HN that get to the front page tend to attract other articles on the same topic. I can imagine this along the lines of:
Human 1: Hey apparently there's an audience on HN for topic X that I enjoy! I wonder if HN is also interested in this related article on topic X.
Or Human 2: Hey here's this interesting related article I discovered while looking at front-page article Y on topic X.
The summary of all of this is to say that my guess is that like attracts like and uncommon topics die down fairly quickly in time. I imagine that it is less of a concerted effort by stakeholders to push and direct topic X than just the effects of a curious and diverse group.