The building holiday redirected competition into reconstruction

A ten-year building holiday saved money and appeared to reduce tensions, but every navy still watched its capital ships age. With new construction blocked, modernization became the only route to improved capability and navies had stronger reasons to stretch reconstruction rules toward near-rebuilds. Those extensive changes also made it harder for rivals to judge what an older hull could actually do. Limited legal new construction would redirect scarce budgets toward more efficient new ships, leaving less money for upgrading the remainder of the fleet. A controlled replacement program could therefore preserve shipyards while making the resulting force more predictable than a nominal freeze filled with concealed reconstruction.