So the take away is that if the user actually gives me two or three or four or whatever, this is this expression "is n less than 1" is going to evaluate to false if it's actually two or three or four or whatever.
The Navy's choice is clear: develop and acquire N-UCAS now, in a low risk, cost-effective manner, or make the false economy of cutting funding now and then developing N-UCAS as a high risk, crash program later.