Government employees who manage contracts can be paid very well, depending on their grade. A GS-14 makes over $120k base, with pension, significant healthcare c

Government employees who manage contracts can be paid very well, depending on their grade. A GS-14 makes over $120k base, with pension, significant healthcare contribution, etc. A GS-15 is $152k base. I get that that may not seem like much, but it is 2-2.5x the median household income in the US. Aside from that, a contract manager/Contract Officer is typically not an engineer and if you're lucky, may be someone that can fill more of a product owner role. It's not really comparable in those terms. F35 really isn't a great example of poor engineering talent, that is an example of a crap acquisition strategy in general and was pretty much destined to be problematic from the start due to politics, conflicting/competing requirements, etc. You could have hired the best engineers in the world and they would have likely ended with the same results, because the majority of the issues with the F35 had little to do with engineering.