The air force and current administration has realised the mistakes they’ve made with the F-22 project.
- Curtailing and shutting down the production of the aircraft has resulted in the air forrce not having a war capable frontline fighter. This is because at any given point, the F22 maintains ~50% combat readiness. So around 75 aircraft in total. That, coupled with the high maintainance and turnaround timeframe means it’s almost impossible to use the F22 in a sustained engagement that is closely fought (SU35, J20 etc.).
- Preventing the export of the F22 to close allies means the US bears all of the considerable costs to build the aircraft, and numbers of super capable aircraft in NATO are restricted onlyt to the US.
They’ve realised that they can’t restart the factories to build the aircraft because it’s too expensive. The new fighter program will only START to introduce the aircraft in mid 2030s, so combat ready capability in 2040s.
China has emerged as a proper threat, and they wish they had the F22 at the numbers they’d originally envisioned to replace the F15 instead of supporting it (They’ve ordered a new version of the F15 because they can’t get the F22 numbers up).
All in all, they’ve spent 15 years messing this program up, and now that it’s in the shape that they wanted in 2008, they now realise they massively need the plane, and they’re trying everything to get as much as they can out of it.