How navies understate or exaggerate capability

A benchmark navy can benefit from understating performance because competitors may design toward an artificially low standard. In this framework, the benchmark is the fleet that others choose first for comparison: the Royal Navy in the 1930s and the contemporary US Navy are the examples. Scale and bulk purchasing could then allow actual performance to exceed the advertised bar. Smaller navies have different incentives: stronger claims can support foreign military sales, help fund domestic naval industry, and offset an opponent's numerical advantage psychologically. Japan's British-built capital ships and cruisers before the Russo-Japanese War were promoted as improved versions of respected British designs. That reputation supplemented the Six-Six Fleet Plan by encouraging potential opponents to treat the Japanese fleet as a first-rate threat.