How could the Navy fund missile research despite defence cuts?

How could the Royal Navy fund so much research and development despite repeated cuts?

It reused World War II infrastructure, paying to fit out existing facilities instead of building them. Those inherited assets reduced development costs, although some budgets and costs were still inflated.

Extensive naval research continued despite repeated cuts and government concern about money. The armed forces inherited a large stock of World War II facilities, so a programme could pay to adapt infrastructure that already existed. Fitting out those facilities was cheaper than building them from scratch. That inheritance also makes later cost comparisons misleading when modern programmes must replace facilities that Cold War developers could reuse. The savings do not rule out inflated budgets and costs in individual projects.