I'm nowhere near old enough to remember the F-16's development, but it sure looks like recent programs have suffered a great deal from bikeshedding and trying t

I'm nowhere near old enough to remember the F-16's development, but it sure looks like recent programs have suffered a great deal from bikeshedding and trying to be everything to everyone. Look at some of the F-16's rough contemporaries: The F-14, F-15, F/A-18, A-6, and A-10. Despite a fair bit of flexibility and overlap in mission capabilities, especially after post-debut tweaking, these are all different planes designed with different goals in mind. Now think about the F-35/JSF. It's one program that's basically trying to replace everything leftover from the cold war. That seems like a big red flag. It seems like something similar is going on in the LCS program. They're explicitly supposed to be "flexible" and "modular" -- aka "be ALL THE THINGS!" -- and "replace" a variety of more special-purpose ships. Swiss army knives are handy, but I'm not going to try building a house with one.