It has probably more to do with a centralized funding.
The agency gets money for building some equipment, usually a lot more than they really need, build it and once it works their job is finished. No amount of potential improvement will convince government to fork some additional money. So the agencies focus on the development of new techniques, equipment etc. and neglect maintenance or improvement of the one they already have. After 20~30 years no one knows design details of that ancient stuff anyway, and even if they did they would be better off designing it from scratch (what they will at some point do, as a part of another brand new, big bucks project).
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