This. Why the hell are we propping up private "veteran owned" companies that repackage a few things into a Pelican case and call it a revolutionary new product and sell it for tens of thousands over MSRP?

(I've seen one too many local 'defense contractors' building 'enabler kits' which are literally just a couple laptops in a Pelican case for way too much money.)

I keep seeing this with little tiny IT companies in the fed landscape and it slightly irks me. This is just the modern form of the $400 hammer...

While your point is perfectly valid, there's a little more nuance to the $400 (or $600) hammer story:

https://www.govexec.com/federal-news/1998/12/the-myth-of-the...

This.

I live outside DC, lots of friends who are contractors in IT/software. More than a few have been on the same contract, doing the same work, for years or decades. It's effectively a full-time permanent position, or could be. Not sure how there's any efficiency there when the contracting firm's owners need to make a cut.