i think this plus all the aerospace companies eating their own QA to increase profits results in the f35 falling missile. the clean room part alone is a critical design point but not necessarily a flaw. insects have little exoskeletons because keeping your mushy bits complicated and mushy and toughening your outside is a valid strategy for survival. and i think tactically the thing is supposed to be a steal fighter with like VTOL maneuverability or something dumb? which would necessitate more of the complicated mushy bits that don't jive with a 1940's era production messy production setting. not to defend us military choices, i wish they wouldn't spend unimaginable sums of money perfecting the magical invisible death machine. that they test above my city. i just wouldn't say that housing complex electronics inside of a well-engineered rugged exoskeleton is necessarily a flaw.

covered the SR-17 in their episode on stealth jets, and they noted how the vehicle has to undergo such a profound physical change at supersonic speed that it's basically falling apart on the runway when it's parked.

This is just the reality of making a plane fly very fast. When they're not moving very fast, they start to fall apart.

I'm not particularly familiar with these jets, but my guess is they need a clean room for manufacturing mostly due to electronics and hydraulics. Really just about any kind of precision instrument requires a clean room to manufacture