Be that as it may, it still shows that is was possible to do bleeding-edge flight platform developments on-time, on-budget... as long as you keep a tight focus on your goals.
Bring in more than one branch of the services, and you’ve complicated your problems tremendously. We know this from multiple projects in the US military inventory.
Bring in more than the US services? Absolute insanity is the result.
A nice position to take, but totally untenable. All three missions needed a follow on replacement for current weapons systems, but the individual services couldn’t afford the costs by themselves. Involving foreign countries having requirements inputs (but not veto authority) was a reasonable approach to sharing development costs. You cited the B-52 (never exported) and C-130/F-16 (both exported), but C-130/F-16 customers ONLY paid for those delta development costs related to unique configurations meeting their requirements, not for any of the initial development costs. Lockheed footed the bill for C-130J configuration development, but the gubmint balked at amortizing those costs for pricing production -J aircraft.
If you really need to whine about something, why not complain about all the interest money, aerospace technology and industrial secrets given to, and stolen by, the communist chinese?? Those trillions pale in comparison by far to F-35 development overruns, and they have already been caught hacking F-35 technology secrets with no penalty whatsoever from the Obama regime!
JC