“No amount of augmentation of the staff of human computers—then around 200—would suffice,” wrote (now Captain) Goldstine in a postwar report. “It was accordingly decided … to sponsor the development of a radically new machine, the ENIAC, which if it were successful would reduce the computational time
I think back in 1944, no one knew the war would end in 1945. So funding ENIAC was to help the current short term goal
