I have interacted with a level of the US DoD that is far removed from actual politicians. The situation there is closer to what others described: a pervasive, penny wise and pound foolish fear of being seen to spend money. It really affects everything: an entire professional workforce hired at well below market salary, wasted man-hours due to restrictions on equipment purchases, frequent reorgs to shuffle budgets around, etc. If this is anything like that, I bet they gave this to the cheapest bidder without consideration of much else.