Delayed a bit and created something based on the CONFORM design which was terminated in favor of what became the Los Angeles class. On paper, many things about CONFORM look better than the 688, but it was banking on / relying on a whole lot of new and un-tried stuff to attain this superior performance.
Also a note on the Thresher class, I've very likely overstated how loud it was with the 7-blade screw but this is to show how much this problem would have undermined the improvements made with Thresher.
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