Once modular light frigates and patrol vessels become the familiar procurement path, systems outside the standard can look unusually expensive and inconvenient. Larger missiles and high-end ships would lack the shared production, maintenance, and upgrade pool that makes StanFlex attractive. Powerful bespoke capabilities could therefore become especially difficult to justify in the late 1990s and early 2000s. CAMM and Sea Ceptor eventually offer more options within a compact air-defence family, though they do not remove the intervening risk. Modularity shapes budgets and force structure as well as engineering.
Notable Point · 57:27-59:07
When modular procurement makes heavy bespoke systems harder to defend
A successful module ecosystem could create its own institutional bias, making large ships and weapons that cannot fit the standard box more difficult to fund.