Most of the expense in government/military contracts comes from the many, many layers of "management" that have to be continuously fed a diet of large stacks of

Most of the expense in government/military contracts comes from the many, many layers of "management" that have to be continuously fed a diet of large stacks of cash. Then you have to factor in the perverse incentives created for the contractor, where the longer they can drag a project out for and the worse of a job they can do and the cheaper the people they can hire to just barely get the sign-off for completion at the end, the bigger a success it is for the contractor. I worked for quite awhile doing maintenance on a system which was originally developed by an external contractor (one of the ones whose names appears in the comments on this thread). There was originally a contract to develop 3 separate systems. After years of delays and renegotiations and whatnot, 3 separate contracts had been given to the company, and once the government got sick of throwing good money after bad and said 'just give us whatever you have', they got 1 system delivered. That took 9 months of continuous effort to get into a state where it could be used. You know what you call that? A stellar success. At least, if you're the contracting company.