So, just how well is the F-35 program going? As with most modern DoD projects, probably not as well as it should:

To put it another way: [The F-35 program] plans some 66 months from first flight to [initial operational capability]. One third of those months will be behind us in October and fewer than one per cent of the planned test hours have been accomplished. Now, we all know that flight testing accelerates geometrically as more airplanes join the force and as they get more reliable, but there's still some hard work ahead of the JSF program.

People have tried to "fix" the way the Pentagon runs armaments programs for probably as long as it has existed. Nothing seems to improve the situation, and calls for radical reform are written off as dangerous bomb-throwing by people with no grasp of the whole situation.