Was the mandate change a poor decision?

https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/260096.260385
This paper completely ignored arguments such as the mandate apparently only
 requiring demonstrating an expectation of being more cost effective than
 Ada. Replaced by a mandate that is apparently ignored as it is basically
 reduced to an aim of being cost effective without competition to Ada which
 was designed to be cost effective and so hard to beat.
History seems to have shown that he was completely wrong and in my opinion
 the mandate change has inflated costs to tax payers significantly, such as
 in the F-35/JSF program.
Do you think that this paper had any influence on making the mandate
 impotent?
Am I ignorant of improvements that the mandate change has brought about?
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Regards, Kc