I did a load of work in defence (in the UK) and found it a very frustrating experience because the way it works they weren't even "paying for a solution to their problems".
You have to underbid the initial proof of concept phase to win it, and then hack together something that vaguely meets the requirements in the limited budget.
Then you've got the next 10 contracts over several years to develop that into the actual product - meet all the requirements. The problem is that nothing in this process encourages you to write good, clean code. If the code was such a mess that it took 3 times as long as it should to add new features, that meant that we could charge 3 times as many hours.
You have to underbid the initial proof of concept phase to win it, and then hack together something that vaguely meets the requirements in the limited budget.
Then you've got the next 10 contracts over several years to develop that into the actual product - meet all the requirements. The problem is that nothing in this process encourages you to write good, clean code. If the code was such a mess that it took 3 times as long as it should to add new features, that meant that we could charge 3 times as many hours.