'Playing it safe' is also the goal of the gov't civilian managers of those projects- they have a promotion schedule to hit and having a 'failure' on their resum

'Playing it safe' is also the goal of the gov't civilian managers of those projects- they have a promotion schedule to hit and having a 'failure' on their resume jeopardizes that. And since they're only going to be there 2-3 years, the goal is just to keep things propped up until they rotate out.