Interwar aviation procurement balanced innovation against wartime risk

Interwar aircraft procurement was a decision under uncertainty rather than an exam whose correct answer was already known. For every advocate later proved right, several equally confident proposals could be wrong. A ministry that committed its whole force to the wrong breakthrough might enter war without a viable capability, whereas a conservative design could preserve a usable baseline. That did not require ignoring experiments: the services could support multiple ideas while delaying fleet-wide commitment until evidence improved. The lesson separates technical possibility from the level of confidence needed to stake an institution's wartime effectiveness on it.