2. Are you sure the non-commercial version come from and doesn't have embedded processor, and how do you know it's really good quality and not just very expensive because of low quantity production?
It's a tough problem.
And while I agree that excess stock costs pale in comparison to a sub or boat, multiply that by every part necessary to keep one operational, and then face all the people every year who say the defense budget needs cut.
And as I said to a sibling comment below, you can't always just buy excess. You have budgets you need to stay under, to support everything you handle.
Consumer grade is not the same as buying from the same places we buy, either. You have to use approved vendors, which add their own markup. What you or I may buy for $5 might only be available for $25.
First. No, lifetime buys are not always a tough problem. While they can be tough, consumer grade electronics have to be the best product to predict lifetime buys on due to clear end of life and good data on mean time to failure.
Second. Let's do some math. Let's assume a 30 year operation. There are 48 of this sub planned. Let's say for some reason they go through 3 a year. At $30 each, we're looking at $130k to outfit the entire fleet of subs for their operational lifetime. Or, we could buy about 3.5 of the existing joystick, not even enough to outfit the 4 subs that are already in operation.
Lastly, it is likely that a 3rd party would take over the manufacture of these devices when they end of life anyway. It's a popular consumer electronic after all. The government would just buy a bunch then, reducing lifetime warehouse costs and getting better data to predict the lifetime buy.
The problem comes when you start going through 3 a year, but then say 5 years down the road you start going through 15 a year. There could be a premature wear issue, some bug, an update from a related system, whatever. But you can't always plan for those, and it can come back to bite you. And whomever has the inventory at that time can have quite a markup.
For what it's worth, I think this controller idea is excellent.
At $20 a piece, the pentagon has now spent $10,000. This is not what in military spending passes for excess $ :) Yes, the numbers might be somewhat off, and there's storage cost, but really - we're talking Pentagon here. The place of the infamous $640 toilet seat :) (I know, the price got reduced to $100. Still, on the scale of Pentagon procurement, a lifetime buy of XBox controllers is pretty trivial)
I think when its come to HIDs like controllers or keyboards, off the shelf is fine. We can have the exact same conversation for Dell keyboards or 3rd party keyboards and mice.