blame king nigger. They wanted to buy enough to replace the eagle fleet forever, but he canceled the production contract at 187 completed aircraft, when there were 280 ordered.
I love the raptor because it’s the perfect example of retarded institutionalism (granted I got this from old memory, may not be super correct). They pretended that they would shut it down and start building the F-35 in the facility, but save all the tooling, record all production methods, and retain everything needed to restart the line and make more.
Then all of 5 years pass and they start admitting that they were missing it. Tooling gone, procedures missing, the usual. Then the narrative popped up that ACTUALLY they deliberately destroyed it to keep the chinks from getting that super valuable cutting edge 1992-era design.