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On Tue, 6/16/15, Bruce Johnson <xxxxxx@Pharmacy.Arizona.EDU> wrote:

 Subject: Re: [TML] Question
 To: "xxxxxx@simplelists.com" <xxxxxx@simplelists.com>
 Date: Tuesday, June 16, 2015, 2:36 PM

 > On
 Jun 16, 2015, at 1:12 PM, Grimmund <xxxxxx@gmail.com>
 wrote:
 >
 >>
 >> A tank you cannot transport to the
 battlefield because it’s
 >> too
 large/heavy to use your infrastructure is a lump of useless
 metal.
 >> Expensive useless metal that
 will likely cause your troops to get killed
 >> because you couldn’t afford the
 tanks that could be transported.
 >
 > That's an argument to upgrade your
 infrastucture, not downgrade your amor.

 Which may be prohibitively expensive compared
 to building your tanks, which ARE FINE FOR THE ROLE THEY
 WERE BUILT FOR (note 'While the TAM would have been
 effective against any possible South American opponent”
 ...It’s also illogical that it was ‘helpless against any
 NATO standard tank'…if it mounted the same gun, it’s
 not precisely ‘helpless’.)

 But then this is the very kind of thinking that
 gets us absurdities like the F-35 as a replacement for both
 the F-16 as an air superiority fighter and the A-10 as a
 ground support aircraft.

 Perhaps we can call the F35 the
 ‘dallyplane’, to drag it back to the source material.

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And *that* sorta' reprises the arguments that US DoD chief Robert McNamara & his 'whiz kids' first proposed way back in the early '60's with their 'one size CAN be made to fit all' push to make the F-4 Phantom the end-all a/c for the US Armed Forces.
Now the Phantom did turn out to be a remarkably flexible a/c but by the '70's specialty a/c were back again.
It seems to me that what happens is that, as the cost, of a program increases, those who have a stake in it, whether personal, financial or otherwise, start tacking on more & more 'capabilities' to justify the increased cost. In the end a sort of 'cannibalization' starts to take effect as money is taken from a/c already  in service to keep a program 'on track'. But retiring an a/c before it's successor is ready for service has always been a bad idea. The first example I can remember is when C-141 production was prematurely ended 'cuz "the C-5 is almost ready to go"  in the '60's.

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