The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter was pitched as the plane that would replace nearly every fighter jet in the American arsenal, built in three variants for the Air Force, Navy, and Marines at once. This film lays out the case for and against that gamble, tracking the stealth technology, the helmet-mounted display that feeds pilots a 360-degree view of the battlespace, and the vertical-landing version built for Marine carriers. Engineers and program officials explain what the aircraft is supposed to do better than the F-16s and F/A-18s it replaces, while critics point to years of schedule delays, cost overruns that pushed the program into the hundreds of billions of dollars, and software problems that grounded test flights. Archival footage of test flights and hangar interviews carry the account, with the central question left open rather than resolved: whether a single airframe can really serve three branches of the military, or whether trying to do everything made the jet worse at everything.