This doesn't seem too different than John Deere tractors, which weigh heavily in most right to repair discussions.
Here, the navy (very likely. Even if this provider didn’t give them the option, they could have gone with a different one) had a choice.
Yes, the Navy can select a higher bid as long as there is justification, and here the justification is long-term value and readiness…but a significant portion of the voting public is incapable of properly weighing long-term versus short-term effects.
All they’d understand—and they’d be helped along to this conclusion by plenty of politicians who just want to use the situation to score points—is, “The government paid twice as much for an aircraft carrier than it needed to!”
This comes at a cost but looking around at comparable outsourcing situations, everyone follows the same line of thinking. Sell my responsibility for (someone else’s) money.
They are sometimes told about it, tenth-hand, such as the fabled $10,000-hammer and the gold toilet seat.
Congress itself sees these costs, or more precisely, teams working for congressmembers see them. Congress members approve bills that are not lowest-cost when there is personal benefit for their careers: pork-barrel. It's very hard to justify not-lowest-cost without a pork-barrel angle.
The Navy should probably contract with Deere, as they’d probably think they’re getting a good deal.
John Deere's model is successful, but ultimately monopolistic.
I’m not condoning Deere, BTW. Just pointing out that there are tens of thousands (maybe hundreds of thousands?) of farms that get very busy twice a year and much less busy the rest of the time. Having the capacity to make sure a farmer gets service quickly during those busy times is really hard. And expensive. If anyone had a better idea on how to do it they’d be a billionaire. I mean, there probably aren’t enough helicopters available for Deere to do what Caterpillar does.