[refenestrator]

I see that you're a Marine on your bio, so I guess we are just not going to see eye to eye on how important/relevant amphibious landing capabilities are :) I actually remember hearing about that EFV and thinking 'what a waste of money' at the time.

Respect for acknowledging the reliability issues.

I think another elephant in the room is the bifurcated (or trifurcated) nature of things the armed forces are expected to do. Occupying countries with large goat-herding sectors is totally different from sci-fi peer military conflict planning.

Meanwhile, most of the brass just wants to re-enact WWII, which serves neither mission. Everyone loves the idea of carriers or a d-day landing, when "large # of cheap, expendable drones and missiles" completely obliterates both of those strategies.

Did you ever read about Millenium Challenge 2002? Marine general plays red team, sinks entire US fleet with the realization that if you launch a lot of missiles at once at a carrier group, the anti-missile batteries can't stop them all. They decide on a do-over with a new rule that he can't do that anymore, and run the exercise to the predetermined conclusion that validates their doctrine.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002