Why fleet reform needs an artificial start date

Would it be more instructive to ask for the latest possible date to fix each fleet weakness?

That can be useful, but without a fixed boundary the answer can keep moving decades earlier and make the exercise unmanageably broad.

Most major warship changes must begin before war because design, construction, crew preparation, and supporting infrastructure all take years. A search for the last possible intervention date can illuminate those lead times, but an unlimited counterfactual could retreat indefinitely into earlier institutional and industrial decisions. Almost any problem becomes easier if the scenario is allowed to move back to 1905 or earlier. The chosen date is therefore a methodological constraint that makes comparison possible rather than a claim that it is the perfect moment for every reform.