TD - A pretty good analogy. A US air arm with 1,726 F-111s would have been good at burning fuel and (eventually) capable of low-level night attack, but that would have been about it.
N-a-B - I'm talking about the need to plan for "after the JSF" so that we are not (for example) stuck with JSF as a Typhoon/Super H &c replacement in the late 20s, and so that we retain some flexibility to deal with changing missions and threat technology.