WTF?! When was the last time you've ever heard of a dogfight?
The days of air-to-air combat are long gone. And where air-to-air combat is still needed, long range missiles take care of it.
Well, the reality is, like shock and awe, you can't just pretend you don't have to cover certain parts of warfare.
So, bombing the shit out of stuff and thinking people will become demoralized and welcome you with open arms ... utterly useless if you can't put boots on the ground. For the same reason that bombing ISIS only goes so far.
And, likewise, if you can't maintain air superiority in an up close and personal manner, you can't do the roles like close air ground support. So if you do have boots on the ground, you can't keep them safe if you get your ass kicked.
People can pretend this will never be needed again. That doesn't mean if you ever found yourself in an actual war you wouldn't.
So, if the people you're up against have things which can beat you down in a dogfight, you could quickly find yourself realizing you're ill equipped for a given situation.
Somewhere along the line they decided to make the Swiss-Army knife of aircraft, which it turns out is terribly suited to most of its applications.
Which is moot, because the plane is so late and over budget it should never go into production .. in which case it's years of wasted money and effort to come up with a solution which doesn't work.
Which, sadly, was what people said from the beginning.