[Onkel Neal]

America's fancy new fighter jet stinks at fighting. And the US Navy doesn't care.

In trials off the California coast in January 2015, a 1980s-vintage U.S. Air Force F-16 repeatedly defeated one of the flying branch's brand-new F-35A Joint Strike Fighter stealth jets in mock dogfights. "The F-35 was at a distinct energy disadvantage," the unnamed JSF pilot wrote in a scathing five-page brief that War Is Boring obtained.

The test report is the latest proof that the F-35 — which Lockheed Martin is developing for the U.S. Air Force, Navy, and Marines, and a host of American allies — is an inferior fighter in close combat compared to much older planes. Complex and heavy, the JSF "can't turn, can't climb, can't run," to quote one infamous 2008 war game report.

But the U.S. Navy — the third-largest purchaser of F-35s — seems unperturbed. Indeed, in recent planning the Navy describes the JSF less as a traditional fighter than as radar-evading, flying sensor and communications node.