Our new Model A - while everyone else is driving a Ferrari.

@JimRD
I'll take a Ford over a Ferrari every time. I also would think cannon would be a more apt description than a machine gun.

They're building a hyper-expensive machine that is still not battle-ready and could potentially have more growing pains due to its cutting edge technologies.
If I was a potential enemy, I would develop ever more superior ground-to-air capability to compensate for having a smaller budget, so that the F-35 can be dealt with as efficiently as can be.
The Americans have the deepest pockets to pay for this technology, and will stop at nothing to be on top of the war game business. Spending horrendous amounts of capital of tax payer's money will continue unabated. This feeling of superiority may be based on insecurity and is really not necessary.

Strange that the lack of maneuverability is said to be irrelevant due to stealth and long range missile capability... yet they've installed a gun in it?

182 rounds? How long does that last? Less than a second? Add a couple inboard missiles and you have a good short range lightly armed stealth reconnaissance aircraft. Now, add a bunch of missiles under the wings and you get a combat aircraft that is no longer stealthy and horrendously expensive. Without external fuel tanks, it can't have much range. No one design can do everything well. Putting all your eggs in one basket has always been a fundamentally bad idea.

god help this thing if an enemy gets inside its missle envelope, and it EVER has to engage in ACM (dogfighting) with a 5th gen mig that has an optival lock on it with the Mk1 eyeball. it will be dead

It's a rotary cannon, not a "machine gun." A machine gun is a crew served or vehicle mounted small arm. The other is a support weapon.

I agree with Marke. And new fighter jets have been or will soon be made obsolete by drones. This is a huge waste of taxpayers money. Just another boondoggle for the sake of the corporation and the politicians it buys.

Dude. It doesn't have machine guns, it has a canon. A machine gun is a small caliber weapon that fires solid projectiles. A canon is a larger caliber weapon that can fire high explosive rounds. Anything much over 0.5 inch caliber is a canon.

Wonderful! Now all "we" have to is find another bunch of bad guys to justify it's existence, -----& ridiculous costs.