You two are reminding me of a research project I was hired for several years ago. A local marine engineering firm landed a contract to design/build an amphibious drone. This was back before anyone called them “drones”. They had no in-house experience with RC, or aircraft of any kind, but they got the contract because of the marine requirement.
I lucked into the job as the guy at the pointy end - actually building and flying the models. One reason I got the job because I had already designed and built several, very unusual, amphibious models. I knew, from the first time I read the project goals, that it would never work. Almost every single requirement was mutually exclusive. Aircraft are design compromises. You can go fast OR fly long distances, but not both. You can have STOL capability OR you can carry heavy loads, etc etc. They wanted a smallish, autonomous, amphibious craft that could fly long distances, with heavy loads, into and out of very tight spaces, like a small clearing in the woods, or a small river, or lake, in the hills, etc,. AND land and take off in a sea state 3 from well off shore. Sea state three is pretty rough water. That last requirement alone is almost impossible by itself, and certainly not possible carrying heavy loads, and a ton of fuel AND being STOL, and all terrain capable. Oh - it also had to be stowable in a small space on a ship, which means folding wings, and be strong enough for regular navy grunts to handle it with no damage.
Anyway, to shorten a very long story, what you two are describing sounds very much like what I went through - endless meetings, re-designs, and literally daily re-draws of the CAD files, and ‘procedures’ I was supposed to be following. There were two main engineers over seeing my part, plus three different CAD guys with another engineer over them, plus the two or three bigger bosses - all of them had to have their fingers in the pie, and none of them had a clue about aircraft design or building. I had a blast though and made darn good money doing my “hobby stuff” 8 hours a day 
Oh, I built and flew several iterations on the design, but we never got to a flyable model that was actually any where near the design goals. They ran out of money long before we actually got that far. IIRC, I think the final report said that they spent less than 1% of the total funds on my part - the actual building, and flying of the models. The rest was all planning, ‘studies’, re-designs, and administrative stuff.
Talk about $10000 toilet seats