Col Andrew Toth, the wing commander at Eglin, called the first F-35 sortie there a “milestone for the program.”

In perhaps the most ironic of circumstances, the flight was cut short by an in-flight emergency on the vaunted new aircraft.

Pilots and maintainers will meet later today to discuss the potential fuel leak finding that caused the precautionary end of the sortie at 15 minutes versus the 90 minutes scheduled to be airborne to complete the operational check flight.

To be fair, every aircraft and program has its issues and its bad days.  The F-35 just happens to have a lot of them at really bad times.