If funding's a problem across many fields then wouldn't it perhaps make better sense to just accept Fortran as the most appropriate language for certain well defined application types/fields and concentrate on improving the language, that is fixing its actual or perceived limitations in current environments?

It would seem more efficient to centralize effort to improving just the language and its tools than to convert or rewrite a whole world of disparate applications that have been developed over many decades. After all, take English for instance, at any point in history, say 1600, its grammar and vocabulary were appropriate for the time. Moving on 400+ years till now we didn't chuck English away and replace it with a seemingly better language such Esperanto but progressively updated it to modern requirements.

I have to admit to some bias here in that Fortran was my first language so it acted as the template for others. That said, I am not convinced that the enormous plethora of different languages that have flooded programming in recent decades has benefited computing and CS to the extent that perhaps it ought to have as there has been a great deal of unnecessary duplication and overlap that's led to wasted human effort—the need to learn many different languages, lack of uniformity etc.

The large number of languages, lack of agreed consensus/standards—the most appropriate language for a given class of applications, etc.—has also led to language ghettoization where programmers swear by one language they've become familiar with and continue to use for jobs where another would be more appropriate. And one can't blame them for not wanting to learn a new language seemingly every other year.

It seems to me that rationalizing and simplifying the language problem ought to be a high priority for CS. Given its long and mature history, its entrenched position in certain fields and its proven suitability for math-intensive work, that process could begin with Fortran as it would likely be the least disruptive.