[NewsAware]

They are paying to play -that's how outsourcing works. The high salary of Google devs is priced into the contracts the pentagon pays. So it's not an issue of salary level but of their inability to build up an internal structure (to which their public image among the SV crowd contributes) which causes them problems. Can this be solved? Maybe, but not simply by raising salaries.

[drak0n1c]

True, developing sustainable institutions with vision and effective knowledge transfer/accumulation mechanisms requires more than cash. It requires cultural attraction and perhaps some measure of prestige. NASA, and the major military branches have this. Some don't. Those that don't revert to the lowest common denominator for bureaucracies - a short-sighted transactional entity that shuffles around one-off projects.