Not to be morbid . . .
Too early to engage the question, 'how is it that the massive bureaucracies in the U.S., at the federal level, could have fumbled this situation so badly?' While enough facts for a more complete post-mortem probably aren't yet known, this SLF/att'y wants to take a swing at it.
Perhaps "two-year face-off" is very descriptive, if your context is hockey. That is, bureaucracies of this size move in slow motion.....very slow motion.
Especially where complicated technologies (and engineering too, I think) are at the center of the question or questions. Consider a comparable situation--not aviation, but really all about complicated technologies and "Engin."
The U.S. National Orbital Debris R&D Plan was made final (in form) and published in the waning days of the prior presidential administration. It was done by - get this - four (4) levels of formal bureaucracy, plus a superior bureaucratic layer. A Working Group, of a Subcommittee, of a Committee, of the National Science and Technology Council, layered over by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. The Council, ostensibly anyway, coordinates in and among the Executive Branch, while OSTP, again ostensibly, advises the president. How this all works really, given that the president is the head of Executive Branch..... not for today.
So, if you've indulged this comparison of bureaucratic inertia so far, do you wonder how the R&D Plan is progressing? Public comments on the plan were solicited through the Federal Register, and three-minute timeslots were available for two "listening sessions." Despite some professional and academic interest I declined to participate at all - trying to say much of anything about a complicated (to say the least) technology-focused problem set in 3 minutes, that would insult any professional audience's intelligence. (The cognitive, not artificial....)
Yet, your bureaucracy at work. So, some Slayer of Bureaus is needed, I would suppose.