I think you've hit the nail on the head, it's state-of-the-art.
Whatever the state-of-the-art at the time is.
>modern fighter jet can fly literal circles around one that was designed with a slide rule.
Yes, but not so easy to outperform the ones designed by those who had adequate talent using a slide rule, once those guys got a hold of mainframes.
Not all of those people are completely gone yet, mostly retired if still living, but they've been with us as senior engineers ever since, just dwindling numers.
But no new crops of that type of average engineer since the 1970's.
It might be beginning to show, things like B52's seem to have been impossible to replace ever since.
What are the odds of a dramatically different B52 replacement, designed today, lasting 60 years into the future and still operating routinely? If any could be made airborne by then anyway.
A modern fighter jet can fly literal circles around one that was designed with a slide rule.
Computers have gained enormous complexity.
Medicine is doing all sorts of crazy stuff (biologic drugs and mRNA and so on).