6/08/2005

Requirements far beyond the state of the art

You may think they're talking about now:
They said the military conjures up dream weapons ... It sets immensely expensive technological requirements that are far beyond the state of the art of war, weapons executives say. Officials at the handful of major military contractors cross their fingers and promise to fulfill those visions.
They're also talking about then:
By the most salient measure, the rapid construction of ironclad warships, the program was a colossal failure: "When the war ended, twenty-seven of the thirty-nine monitors ordered after mid 1862 were still under construction."
This was the result then:
... failure discredited the project-office approach to managing the design and construction of warships and swung the pendulum back in the direction of the traditional naval bureaus, with the net result that "postwar Navy shipbuilding technology regressed, returning primarily to wooden ships built in Navy yards."
What will be the result now?