In 1994 George Muellner was a one-star Air Force general, fifty-one years old. He had been a decorated fighter pilot in Vietnam and a commander during the Gulf War. He was on his way to what he considered a plum assignment in the Pentagon when he got a call from Merrill McPeak, then the Air Force Chief of Staff. McPeak asked Muellner how he would like to be in charge of a campaign to build an airplane not just for the Air Force but for all the services. The airplane would have to avoid the death spiral through radical cost-cutting, and it would have to meet the distinctive needs of the Air Force, the Navy, and the Marine Corps with one new machine.

Muellner said he would not like this opportunity one bit. But he knew the perfect candidate—some other general. A few weeks later, Muellner told me early this year, he was called back for a meeting with civilian Pentagon officials, who asked him again how he would like the assignment. He told them, "I have to be honest—I really don't want to lead this program. I have some real misgivings about its likelihood of success." Half an hour after that interview McPeak phoned him. "It didn't work," he said. "You got the job."

As the director of JAST, Muellner was supposed to convert a mere research team into an actual airplane-buying effort—the Joint Strike Fighter project. "From the very beginning," he told me, "the program was resented by all the military services. The new administration had come in and canceled a number of the major programs"—on top of Cheney's A-12 cancellation—"and they really did not have a good solution as to what would replace them."

Through 1994 Muellner assembled a staff and began to consider how to overcome the history of joint-program failure and the current reality of adversaries in every corner of the Pentagon. He met with each of the service chiefs and asked what kind of airplane the services really needed. Admiral Frank Kelso, the Chief of Naval Operations, told him what the Navy required: an airplane with two engines, in case one failed over the ocean; two seats, so that a navigator or a weapons operator could be aboard; and enormous gas tanks, so that the plane could fly 1,000 miles inland from a carrier to launch an attack.

The Air Force? Merrill McPeak told Muellner that the ideal airplane would be a modernized, stealthy version of the F-16, with one seat and one engine, to keep size and weight down and operating costs low. It had to be more durable than the F-16. And one more thing, McPeak said: "I don't want the damned Navy skewing the program to where I can't afford it." The Air Force operated more fighters than the Navy did, so it had more to lose if per-plane costs got out of control.

Speaking for the Marines, Carl Mundy, the commandant, said he wanted the same airplane McPeak wanted—but it also had to land vertically, like a helicopter.

"It became immediately obvious that we were going to have a difficult time with any design that would satisfy all of them," Muellner told me. The Royal Navy's interests also had to be considered. Its aircraft carriers had smaller decks and airplane elevators than the U.S. Navy's, and the plane would have to fit them, too.

Amazingly, almost thirty years after their conception, Eagle-Falcon still provides the most pragmatic/credible high-low mix around the world (in US, Israel, S Korea, Singapore). Kind of wish that there are still John Boyd and Harry Hillaker/Fighter Mafia like personalities around to fight against the red-tape and guide the JSF program through.