I don't know anything about that particular case, and I would have agreed with you about the "few local SWEs", until I saw this side of the business. You would

I don't know anything about that particular case, and I would have agreed with you about the "few local SWEs", until I saw this side of the business. You would be floored by the amount of work and hoops that you have to jump through, and that's well before the SLAs and KPIs. Take a wild guess how much it costs to hoist, populate, and maintain a gantry with the associated sensors, cameras, etc. That's in the price tag, too. The SWEs aren't doing that work! The SWEs definitely aren't driving the test vehicles at the test track. There's a good reason that the systems themselves cost so much money. Heck, it costs an arm and a leg just for the routine maintenance permits! The CI/CD, security, data persistence, data provenance, latency, and agency interop requirements are absolutely insane. Trust me, it's more than just a few SWE can handle. Lastly, it's definitely not about any under-the-table dealings. There's just a huge amount of work! When deciding to whom to award the contract, they do background checks on key company people, look at past contracts, etc. That's the reality of the situation.