I'm old enough to recall when the WaPo suggested the M1, Bradley, and F16 were junk. They all had a number of teething problems.
One of the biggest issues I thought about was the lack of suitable munitions for stowage inside the stealth body. That is being remedied with multiple smaller and self guiding bombs I believe.
What is amusing are the number of people who keep insisting the F-35 is useless junk. Here are all the countries who have purchased it.
USA
Italy
Japan
South Korea
Australia
Denmark
Netherlands
Norway
UK
Israel
Belgium
Poland
Finland
Singapore
Every single one of those countries conducted an extensive competition where they compared other available fighters. Those fighters include the Rafael, the Eurofighter, the Gripen, various upgrades to F-15s, 16s and 18s, and fourth and fifth generation fighters from Russia and China.
All settled on the F-35. So either all the experts in all those countries that actually test flew and evaluated the best fighter aircraft currently available are idiots, or the blowhard “experts” on internet sites like FreeRepublic know something they don’t. I currently fly with guys who have flown the F-35. They love it. Most also flew other fighter types as well. I think I’ll take the words of actual experts with respect to the capabilities of the F-35.