This is fascinating. This reminds me of a book I read about John Boyd [1] who fought the Air Force to develop theorems about aircraft performance, namely the Energy-Manueverability Theory [2]. He went on to mathematically prove why certain aircraft would fail to live up to their assigned missions and help design the F-15, F-16, and other aircraft. Albeit, the mathematics of a "perfect aircraft" lost when faced with the bureaucracy of the government.

1 - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/38840.Boyd

2 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy–maneuverability_theory