Thanks Volume. Very good stuff.
The only point you made that I would dare to question is the one about the outside shape is more important than the inside. I am not sure that always applies. Certainly the more accurate shape of the AV-8B wing is the inside. The skin had to mate with various internal components and these joints needed to be fuel tight at a significant pressure as well as accurately mate with internal components for strength considerations. So far as an airliner fuse is concerned there may well be cosmetic reasons for controlling the external shape but the boundary layer being what it is I would not worry about the aero aspects. It is all too easy to over engineer the external profile of the rear parts of aeroplanes.
When MDC did the graphite epoxy wing for the AV8-B back in the late 70s (!) I had dinner with John Hart-Smith who as I am sure you know did the structure for the all composite Lear Fan and was ‘borrowed’ at weekends by Sandy Mac for this then revolutionary fighter wing structure (because Sandy clearly felt John was as good as they came in those days). A quarter of a century ago John was remarkably conservative in his views about the merits of going from aluminium to plastic for primary structure. I seem to recall that the weight saving by going composite for the B wing (230 sq ft) was about 230 lb. However, unless you fully design and certificate the same strength and shape in metal I remain a tad dubious about the accuracy of such comparisons.