^Possibly. I've heard that all over when the X-35 was chosen, but I'm glad Lockheed won, though.
The X-32 was really radical though. So much that the demonstrator couldn't even have the radical Pelikan tail, and that they had to submit a second design in the middle of the X-32 production with conventional wings for the actual proposal. And I remember them having to remove the front "chin" of the plane during the VTOL test because of safety precautions. That kind of kinks does make a test plane design seem unreliable.
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