I am not sure we can. Not when we spend gajillions of dollars on fielding a handful of sexy stealthy fighters when we could have still fielded a top-line fighter without a canopy that alone cost half a million dollars. Instead, we let our front-line fighters break apart in flight while pouring billions into a fighter that will never be bought in enough numbers to fill the void.
You tell me: can America really step up to the challenge with this kind of mentality?
The challenge, as you are aware, has nothing to do with national defense and everything to do with "laundering pork" to certain Congressional districts by creating the appearance of military need. The winning porkers are happy today - the losers are caterwauling. If the defense budget were actually based on defending the country it would be at least 50% smaller.
"Boeing" is in no way synonymous with "United States of America" - it's a big, corrupt, multi-national, anti-free market entity that would sell American national security interests out in a heartbeat if a chance arose to generate new revenues in China. Northrop/EADS isn't much better, but in this case they appear to have proposed a superior solution.