Late addition of VTOL variant on mandates common airframe when it was well known that only Lockheed had anything in pipeline that could match the requirements and even then -B meant delays and issues due to inherent complexity of VTOL (to the point Britain nearly canceled the order for -B, only finding out it was too late to refit Queen Elizabeth carriers with CATOBAR kept the purchase afloat)

Reality is that VTOL model is ultimately a niche variant whose mandated commonality with air force and CATOBAR carrier variants impacted negatively both non- and VTOL options.

However, slapping supersonic VTOL requirement on what was supposed to be F-16 replacement in the given timeframe meant Lockheed would automatically get ahead as every other vendor had to scramble nearly from scratch while L-M had fresh supersonic VTOL data from both their own lab work and experimental work on Yak-141