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F-22....great platform, could be converted to navy use with some degree of compromise on stealth...

F-23, not as good as F-22, but could be modified on the drawing board to be the navy and jarheads new fighter.(instead, the chinese have miraculously copied the F-23)

Instead of these scenario’s, lets just put together an aircraft cobbled out of the harrier, f-16 and a little bit of f-14 for good measure....

The f-35 was destined to be a failure from the start, and the good old boys of GW Bush started this whole affair....similar to the whiz kids of kennedy...dump the whole damn project, get the f-23 modifed for carrier use, and build a whole bunch more of the f-22...( I know, this makes too much sense, which means it will never happen )

just sayin’.

F-22....great platform, could be converted to navy use with some degree of compromise on stealth...

You fail to mention the extensive engineering and money involved; neither of which would be minor, to navalize the Raptor.

and the good old boys of GW Bush started this whole affair

The JSF development contract was signed on 16 November 1996.

F-22....great platform, could be converted to navy use with some degree of compromise on stealth... F-23, not as good as F-22, but could be modified on the drawing board to be the navy and jarheads new fighter.(instead, the chinese have miraculously copied the F-23) Instead of these scenario’s, lets just put together an aircraft cobbled out of the harrier, f-16 and a little bit of f-14 for good measure.... The f-35 was destined to be a failure from the start, and the good old boys of GW Bush started this whole affair....similar to the whiz kids of kennedy...dump the whole damn project, get the f-23 modifed for carrier use, and build a whole bunch more of the f-22...( I know, this makes too much sense, which means it will never happen ) just sayin’.

Apparently, the Northrop/McDonnell Douglas YF-23 BlackWidow was stealthier and faster than the YF-22 Raptor. The reason the Raptor won was a mix of it being more maneuverable (2-D thrust-vectoring helped here), being less unconventional than the BlackWidow design, being perceived as easier to convert to the NATF concept (the Navy Advanced Tactical Fighter that was cancelled later on), and also Lockheed's past delivery as compared to McD's fiasco with the A-12.

It is important to note that both designs passed the ATF requirements for a 5th Gen fighter with flying marks, and any design would have been superlative to anything that was flying then, is flying now, or will be flying in the future. There was even a plan to bring back the YF-23 as an interim bomber. Thus, it is not really accurate to say the YF-23 was not as good as the YF-22 because (in two areas, namely stealth and super-cruise speed) it was better, and it primarily lost out due to the NATF issue plus a couple other areas. Both aircraft were, in essence, equal to each other and would have served the USA very well.

As for the Chinese copying the YF-23 design ...no, they have not done that. What they have done is copy the (cancelled) Soviet/Russian MiG-MFI (MiG 1.42/1.44) design of the late 1990s. It is basically a MiG-MFI design, with the one change being side intakes. Here is a small pic of the MiG-MFI ...exactly the same plane as the J-20 apart from the MiG having intakes at the bottom (Eurofighter style) while the 'original' J-20 has intakes on the sides (F-15/Raptor style):