In article , John Carrier
wrote:

[...]
By the time the Bug was validating its incredible
maintainability rep in the late eighties, the writing was on the wall for
the Tom. It's maintainability (lack thereof ... you should have seen what
it was like to keep Block 75's up 'n flying) doomed the jet.

John, what percentage of that maintenance load was specific to keeping
the Tom's mission-capable in the fleet air-defense role? I'm thinking
mainly of the avionics for the Sparrows and Phoenixes. Would there
have been a significant savings in maintenance man-hours if the Toms
had been explicitly transitioned into being "cold nose" bomb trucks
dedicated purely to the strike mission?

It's an idle hypothetical now that the Toms are gone from the flight
decks. But I've always wondered if there was an economical option,
around the time the call was made to retire the A-6's, for handing the
the D's over to the strike community for use solely as strike bombers.