Why the best component was not always the best Royal Navy system

Did the Royal Navy improve its optics by studying equipment acquired from the Imperial German Navy after World War I?

It learned from German equipment, but British optics were already broadly comparable and could be preferable once worldwide maintenance and support demands were considered.

A German component might offer a modest performance advantage while demanding much more maintenance and infrastructure. Equipment supported close to German home bases did not face the constraints of a Royal Navy system expected to work around the world. Worldwide deployment also affected ship size, stores, redundancy, and spare-parts provision. The same problem appears in modern off-the-shelf purchases: once a service heavily modifies a foreign system for its own doctrine, the supposedly common item becomes a bespoke programme in all but name. Headline performance had to be weighed against geography, support burden, and procurement consequences.