[Eaglefixer]

This is a short sighted proposal. As a 21 year USAF logistician in support of aircraft from props to the B-1. I can tell you that only about 40% of lifecycle cost are the development and acquisition costs. 60% of life cycle cost is related to reliability and operational costs. These costs have been completely ignored. The Russian equipment has historically had very poor reliability, requiring much maintenance and logistics cost.

There are always people willing to offer seeming easy solutions to problems that after a complete look turn out to very poor choises.

[M. T. Cicero II]

As a Maintainability/Testability Engineer, several years ago I attended a conference where a General put forth the porposition that M&T were prime drivers in future equipment design. While RAM-D and Log are important, A stainless steel cube is not a fighting machine. Performance is what matters. Let the desingers and builders make a fighting machine, then we will figure out how to keep it running.