Can't argue with any of the above, which certainly seems to be the most pragmatic and likely view. I suspect that the IAB category of the project as originally envisaged was B or below, which would have made it easier to fold into the ship project, which is where they are now.
For those of a conspiracy theorist persusasion, one might also ponder whether the system that meets the original MASC requirement (as opposed to simply FOAEW which is how it started out) is so obvious as to almost mandate choice of ship configuration and therefore implicitly JCA choice......the wrong choice politically.
Last edited by Not_a_boffin; 30th Jan 2007 at 14:14.