Look at the F-111B program, the attempt to build an F-111 variant for carrier use. The F-111B was too big, too unmaneuverable, and had too many other problems so after about 6 years with an initial production of 7 aircraft the program was cancelled. The Navy went back to the drawing board, sought out new aircraft proposals, and eventually ended up with the F-14 to fulfill that role. There's a long history of mistakes and bad designs in military history, but in the US at least most of those mistakes are accepted by the top brass, work arounds are developed, and better systems are procured as replacements. It's a history of lessons learned and applied to future generations of weapons systems.
The F-35 on the other hand appears to not only be enormously flawed but government leadership has consistently refused to address or accept those flaws, and has instead doubled down on the program. The F-35 was sold based on some simple promises: that it would be cheaper than alternatives; that having a common design with 3 variants would reduce costs, increase reliability, and increase capabilities; and that it would be a next generation multi-role fighter capable of easily gaining the upper hand against any competitor in any theater in the world. All of those promises have been broken, utterly. The reality is that there are three completely different planes that have similar names, but the commonality between the different "variants" is only around 30%. Worse, the plane is hugely expensive to produce and even more expensive to operate, with a dismally low "duty cycle" (with a ratio of 3-5 hours of corrective maintenance needed for every single hour of flight time). Slowly but surely the cost of the F-35 is approaching the cost of the F-22 (which is a vastly more capable aircraft). And now we see that the planes aren't actually very good at their job either.
It's like going to the car dealership and trading in your beloved and trustworthy family automobile then the salesman selling you on the idea of a fun but inexpensive and reliable high performance sports car. Then when you get the car you realize that it's a lemon, it has the performance of a Geo Metro but the gas mileage of a HUMVEE, it's in the shop every week for some new problem or other, and then when you check the paperwork you see some stuff you didn't notice when you signed and it actually cost 3x more than you thought. That situation would cause anyone to be pissed off. Unfortunately, the Pentagon is so in bed with LockMart/Boeing that they refuse to criticize it or do anything about it.