“…the military was planning to buy 850 A-12s…”
With the amount of money this government wastes, how about 850 F-22s and we will call it even; Frack the F-35 and its pussy bitchaucrat following. If you want to sell the F-35 as a foreign interim all-about fighter is fine; yet make more advanced F-22s! While I know each version of a plane leads to the next; more advanced F-22s would be hard to match under any condition for the next 20 years; and it’s here today. Oh, unless the government is looking for its continued failure by not getting them.
At the heart of the A-12 legal action are the questions of (a) who caused the delays and cost overruns, and (b) who was minding the store when all of this happened. The issue before SCOTUS may or may not be pertinent to those discussions. Obfuscation, and all that. That's all this was about, not which fighter aircraft we should be buying in 2010.