Rare good news for the F-35 with Japan win

The Lockheed Martin F-35 gets a lot of bad press: programme delays, flight test woes, cost overruns, budget scrutiny... the list is depressingly long. All that, of course, obscures what a piece of work the JSF is. Now it's got a rare piece of good news with Japan's decision to pick it to replace its aging F-4 Phantom IIs. An interesting fact too: the F-35 has never lost a fighter contest it's been entered into. So, by way of celebration, here's a shot of the Lightning II with its older, illustrious namesake, the Lockheed P-38 Lightning.

Credit: Lockheed Martin