JSF and A400M at risk?

[Modern Elmo]

...

"So they really think that they're going to take this thing into the Zagros mountains [in Iran] and land it on a dirt runway? Yeah, right." In the 1980s, that was the standard line used by critics of the C-17 transport.
At the Marines' Forward Operating Base Rhino near Kandahar, 3,300 feet above sea level. C-17s flew 43 missions in late 2001, delivering 1,450 tons of heavy equipment--including the bulldozers and graders which built the camp and kept the runway open, with the aid of a specialised dust-controlled product nicknamed Rhino Snot.

Typically carrying 45 tons of cargo, the C-17s--which had apparently forgotten that they were not C-130s --operated almost exclusively at night, with crews using night vision goggles (NVGs), performing tactical arrivals, assault landings and tactical departures, including steep climbs and rapid changes of heading.

The runway--a [ unpaved] strip less than 7,000 feet long on a dry lake bed, previously used by nothing larger than a Cessna--took a tremendous pounding, but the C-17's twelve-wheel main gear at least left it in a state where it could be repaired for the next night's operations. ...

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb3126/is_664_57/ai_n28928490/