http://theaviationist.com/2013/04/08/skunk-works-jsf-mess/
"In the mid-1960s, there was a proposal by the Secretary of Defense to combine the F-14 and F-15 programs, so we did some analysis”, […] “the Air Force wanted 200 F-15s and the Navy wanted 200 F-14s.
If you designed an airplane for each individual service to do what they wanted, each airplane would weight about 40,000lb, but if you combined them so one airplane could do the job that was needed for each service, the weight suddenly went up to about 70,000lb-and back then it was generally accepted that airplanes cost about a thousand dollars per pound of weight.
The cost savings on producing 400 of one airplane rather than 200 of two was about 10 percent, so it was clearly much more cost-effective to have two separate airplanes doing their own job best.
So how we manage, on the F-35, to suddenly reverse that idea is not clear to me."
Politics ! So i guess thats why the Navy/Marines and USAF always had different birds... F-14s and F-18s and earlier F-4s and A-4s to the AF F-15s, F-16s.. each designed for a specific task.. not sure what uncle sam is thinking with the F-35 since they have the F-22 though.
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