Originally Posted by
Fareastdriver
With propellers you can bang it on a dirt airstrip and thump in reverse thrust. Any crap thrown forward and up will be slung away from the engines by the centrifugal forces generated by the props.
Jet engines just hoover it up.
That's indeed correct (although the YC-14 had apparently very good STOL characteristics 40 years ago, even on dirt strips). But in any case, is that capability worth 10bn€ (low ball guestimate) in R&D and many years delay in the program ? Wasn't the only issue but clearly engineering those from scratch was a very risky proposition. I don't see the reward to be commensurate, so I guess there were other matters considered...