The military can piss away millions of dollars, and hundreds of thousands of hours, and it is not an existential situation.

Meta and it's pursuit of VR would like to have a word.

Crazy investment. No business would do that.

My dad was in a management training program in the 1980s that sound very much like you are describing. e.g. 100s of people start the program for maybe 20-30 slots. Everyone went through the same process for fairness and to identify who should move on.