I specifically made this picture, brought the numbers and percentages, so that it would be clear to every dissatisfied axis player that Jackson is not subject to any discussion. All for objectivity. M36 is the only measure against heavy axis tanks.
But it is, you need to open your point of view, not simply show it.
Did you compared those "objective" values that show Jacksons overperforming? No, you just showed jacksons as mini panthers, wich is wrong by definition, both tanks are different, role and design wise. Therefore there is no productive comparation unless you take ALL the details.
Panthers are the last semi-heavy generalist with better AT than AI. They are not tank destroyers, otherwise panthers should be more than enough to take out allied heavies reliably and effectively, with doesnt happen.
Jacksons have the best backbone in the game, compared to any axis faction. RE, Assengies and Vcrews to repair tanks. A variety of team weapons and mediums to cover the specific gaps missing in the strategy of a real game. Remember, if you adapt ingame you have a chance to win, otherwise its a biased binary result every single time.
Finally, i strongly disagree with the start of the OP, when you used the expression "absolutely necessary" since you know no other option. Its a circular bias to say that. It has been already discussed if not hundreds of times that USF has other not as overperfomant AT options but they all demand more risk/more strategy therefore not appealing for the easy play user.
If you OP agree to discuss in the most objective way, then we should start by agreeing that panthers role =/= jacksons role to begin, even when they both compete for AT superiority. As a sidenote that justifies my point, see what happens when in a void 2 Pz4 fight a single Jackson. Its almost 66% win chance to the couple Pz4 even when they are not meant as dedicated TD tanks.
Added: Even when taking in the fact that a single TD can be saturated, tanks are able to combat wether they are TD or generalist. Thats my point. Panthers are not TDs, jacsons are.
On a second point: The game design. Hardly few people really know what the original faction design was, but we can say for sure that it has changed, towards some mirrored factions.
That has IMO, damaged the original game balance and the subsequent patches are only trying to keep the game together, the game was never meant to reach this far too. Because of that, some factions have very old unit concepts mixed up with recent patches new concepts. That mixture, even when it has been tested is rather chaotic and sometimes springs as OPness.
The fair solution is to take mayor balance actions, starting all over from vet system to finally end in the heavy tank, tech bounding.
But because of this, Jacksons performance was meant to be necessary to fight against an OP OKW (that is no longer OP, annoying but not OP)