"But even Bevilaqua’s genius needed a starting point. And for that... the Americans had to look at a failed project from their greatest rival: The Soviet Union’s Yak-one-forty-one.
While the U-S-S-R was collapsing in the early nineties, their premier V-TOL project was starving for cash. Lockheed Martin saw an opportunity that would go down as the greatest 'bargain' in aviation history.