Forensic engineering as a way to read warship design

Forensic engineering works backward from plans, construction, and visible compromises to infer the reasoning behind a design. Every warship reflects limits in money, treaty rules, infrastructure, or technology. In the China example, priority research and development goes to destroyers, submarines, and naval aviation, while frigates receive versions of systems first fielded in destroyers and provide fleet numbers. That allocation makes sense when frigates supply mass, though a fleet built mainly around frigates would require different standards. The method asks what a navy chose to improve first and what it accepted as dependable. Public claims about being the best therefore become one source among the physical evidence.