the article is 3x to 4x longer than it needs to be. way to much rambling about "macho" whatever and redundant repetitions without defining some terms or ideas.
the point about turdump trying to take credit for it as "good news" to drown out them tanking the economy is relevant.
the distraction from elmo trying to shift contracts to tesla without a full bid process is fair
the control surface-less demonstrator was nice as i havent seen many pictures of it come up.
the big question is whether this is the actual 6th gen NGAD or the tech demonstrator that was finished years ago. the usaf NGAD was supposedly on the chopping block as the future conflict planning teams werent seeing a need for it.
if the conflict is taking out chinese fleets or missile launchers on the coast attacking taiwan, the b21 would play a bigger role if next gen agm projects worked out. at the extreme ranges neither plaaf or nato fighters would be doing much as they wouldnt have the range to fly out far enough to intercept the b-21 before it reached launch range. nato fighters wouldnt have enough range to conduct SEAD or enforce air superiority.
if this is the tech/manufacturing demonstrator that flew years ago to get the greenlight for serial production just being rolled out as a dog and pony show to get a win for the PR, then yeah you can call some southpark shenanigans.
the USAF should probably keep pursuing the ngad because if you dont build it you lose the personnel and institutional knowledge to build a 7th gen when they all move to a new job/company. and you cant get that back without a massive cost far higher than the eventual cost overrun contract of building the 6th gen. supposedly the usaf learned from the f35 failed lockheed promises of concurrency and were targeting cheaper off the shelf solutions.
the problem is if this is a pr stunt and they admin/congress just underfunds it until it dies then it will damage the usaf and foreign relations for decades.
the bit about china catching up by putting out a aliexpress 6th gen is a different matter. we have no idea of what stage the 3 engined quasi-bomber that flew was at. was it a tech demonstrator, prototype, production pipeline test, or just an engine test? if this is just fear mongering a red threat to get funding for the ngad, then this has been going on since the coldwar. the mig25 either accidentally scared the usaf into building the f-15 (fighter with the best combat record ever) or the imagined thread of it allowed congress to fund the f-15 program during some rough years.
on boeing, it was the aquisition of mdd that led to the downfall of the boeing commercial division. the aquired mdd execs were somehow the one promoted when the original good boeing c-suite retired. their cost cutting an other moves are what led to the decline in quality on the jumbos.
as for the f-22. back in the 90's some senator got an act passed restricting the f-22 sales because the intel reports congress was getting was that a ton of our classifed fighter tech was showing up in adversary hands. f-16 was sold to just about everyone and clearly some "ally" lost one in laundry(or isreal handed over way too much of the lavi program materials than they should have). that sale restriction drove up the cost of the f-22 program but it also set back russian and chinese 5th gen programs by decades. the f-35 is out there so eventually some of the tech will disperse, so having a gen that isnt sold to even good allies isnt such a bad thing.