Ben Rich's stories should be considered in context. If you take his stories at face value, then the Skunk Works were significantly more competent AND HONEST tha

Ben Rich's stories should be considered in context. If you take his stories at face value, then the Skunk Works were significantly more competent AND HONEST than any of their competitors, or the rest of Lockheed! He found the bullshit tiring because he felt that he didn't deserve to deal with it, because he trusted in his own competency and honesty. You can see how all the pieces fall together. Somehow, the government has reached a default stance of not really trusting in the honesty (and maybe competence) of their contractors. And frankly, Ben Rich didn't really believe in his competitors either. He just didn't care because he only writes about projects that he's also competing in, so he thinks that his competence will carry him through (which it generally did... not for the F-16 though lol). What about all the competitions that doesn't have the strangely competence and honest vendor? DoD saw what a gong-show single source could be (look at F-35). They figure multi-vendor, open architecture is the way to mitigate that risk.