Having spent a career in the military industrial complex I can attest that equipment, technology and systems do not always get procured because they are the thing that is needed. Such factors as whose districts are involved count. Factors like prestige, corruption and politics are heavily involved. As one Airforce general said in the fifties, unless the next jet is faster and flies higher than the last one, don’t even show it to me.
An example of this is how plate armor stayed around long after its utility on the battlefield was gone. The way it looked followed the fashion of the day, with first pointed feet and then blunt feet. It had become a status symbol. What the modern battlefield needs is artillery shells but look at the debates in the halls of finance and artillery shells take a distant seat from sexier items like stealth.
Eventually, reality wins out, but not before a lot of lives are lost due to political factors.
No one really wants to hear that. That’s “unpatriotic”. The poor grunt in the field pays the price.