“one of the reasons the plane is such a POS is prior cost cutting removed many of its abilities and capabilities”
Nope. Under delivering while overspending caused cuts. The program has had plenty of funding for all features to have been delivered.
I accidentally deleted several reports on exactly why the thing is a POS so I cannot give you any links. However, “f-35 technical reports” search will turn up its many problems.
Among then are likely to be some of the ones I read which specifically cite cost cutting as a major problem. This was done in order to include newly needed features by the Pentagon. These new features where not included in the original design and compromised some that were in the original, as I recall.
If one was simply going to fly the thing around in air shows and the like, it would be just fine, However, placing it in a combat situation is a non-survival situation at present and for the foreseeable future. One such report (many pages long) described each problem in great detail, concluding that the thing needs to be scrapped, redesigned from the ground up, or re-envisioned/re-purposed; short of scrapping, these choices will cost more money, not less, to rectify.
The issue isn’t so much funding as the software and other items are decades, if ever, away from working as conceived.
So while DJT may have talked Lockmart’s CEO into making them cheaper, they will remain a POS, only a cheaper POS.