International malaise among US allies purchasing F-35 fighters continues as Japan loses one of their few over the Pacific, an event that has lead them to ground the rest of their F-35 fleet (archived). Other US allies including Italy are looking to escape the costly boondoggle while NATO member Turkey managed to escape the program by prioritizing the purchase of state of the art Russian air defense missiles over the fighters of a utility so questionable the US has had to resort to purchasing foreign turboprop aircraft to handle a portion of the F-35's designed mission.