While it's all not exactly the same, it does show that there's a mindset w/i the bureaucracy that generates a series of events where 'tomorrow is yesterday' &  the patterns of problems keep getting generated by the same patterns of thinking.
Just look at all the fighter projects that were generated by the uptick in spending fueled by the Korean War.
(There was also an uptick/downtick attributable to WWII)
The early '60's were a downtick, VietNam caused an uptick in spending but not in development.
Then there was a muddled in the '70's (post-VietNam) & then an uptick when during the '80's followed by a downtick after the collapse of the USSR.
The one thing that holds true is that certain folks will do all they can to keep their pet projects going & that's where we have the silliness where they want to retire the A-10 to pay for the F-35.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
On Tue, 6/16/15, Greg Chalik <mrg3105@gmail.com> wrote:

 Subject: Re: [TML] Question
 To: "tml@simplelists.com" <tml@simplelists.com>
 Date: Tuesday, June 16, 2015, 8:27 PM

 Phil, thats
 not quite what happened with the F-35

 The F-35 is
 rally a 'snowball' of a prgram.
 While the
 engine projects were re-funded, it became obvious that a
 'universal' engine will require other
 'universal' solutions to mate it to different
 airframes. There were dozens of USAF, USN/USMC and US Army
 projects looking after these requirements during the Cold
 War era, and the Vietnam war was just a logistic catalyst in
 that effort.
 One of the
 problems not now evident in the F-35 program is that decades
 were spent in just integrating all the different sub-system
 projects.
 The Cold War
 time integration took a major dive after 2000 when the DoD
 reduced the number of primes, and the subsequent mergers and
 hand-overs had to take place. Then the integration of
 international participants.

 The greatest
 ptoblem for the F-35

 On 17 June 2015 at 11:43,
 Phil Pugliese (via tml list) <nobody@simplelists.com>
 wrote:
 This email was sent from yahoo.com which does not allow
 forwarding of emails via email lists. Therefore the
 sender's email address (philpugliese@yahoo.com)
 has been replaced with a dummy one. The original message
 follows:

 --------------------------------------------

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

  Subject: Re: [TML] Question

  To: "tml@simplelists.com"
 <tml@simplelists.com>

  Date: Tuesday, June 16, 2015, 2:36 PM

  > On

  Jun 16, 2015, at 1:12 PM, Grimmund <grimmund@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.

  --
 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 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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