Dreadnought innovation without sustained overmatch

HMS Dreadnought tried to be both the first and the best expression of a new battleship type. In this interpretation, that leap preserved British security for roughly a decade, but the government did not sustain the earlier policy of overwhelming numerical construction. A technological lead is temporary when rivals can copy the type and narrow the margin through an arms race. The counterfactual question is economic as well as strategic: whether building enough dreadnoughts to deter war would have cost less than fighting the First World War.