Treaty limits kept Britain from regularly turning battleship research into new ships, creating what the discussion estimates as a loss of two or three generations of implementation experience. Work continued through scaled gun-barrel metallurgy tests, armour trials, and open-ended funding without one fixed commercial product. Weapons programmes have to prepare a system of systems for an uncertain future conflict, so their end state cannot always be specified in advance. Radar shows why: radar-directed gunnery suddenly extended the range at which first-round hits became practical. The research base preserved technical knowledge, but it could not replace the experience gained by putting successive generations into service.
Notable Point · 12:39-16:55
Why weapons research still needs practical spin-outs
Treaty-era research preserved knowledge, but a decade without turning it into ships cost Britain repeated generations of implementation experience.