Part of it is leveling employment.  The government is fond of large projects that require multi-year ramp-up and ramp-down and massive up/down swings in employment need. 

Suppose in 2019 you're hiring every rocket scientist in town for project X.  2023, you lay them all off because the project is done.  Then project Y arrives, a modification on an existing system, and it has military urgency. 

Only you go to get your rocket scientists back who really know that system, **and they're gone**.  They didn't wait around for you to hire them back.  Some went to be data scientists for Amazon and got poached by Google and live in the Bay Area.  Others work for the Texas oil companies.  Others for FMC in modeling geology out of Salt Lake.  A few emigrated and work for ESA or Airbus, those are the only ones whose skills haven't rotted out.  


The braintrust is gone.  You can’t exactly *draft* them... so now you have to staff that department up from scratch with green weenies who don't know the systems at all.  

So, you have a government project that's fairly "D-list" - that is, the government is willing to tolerate flex on the project.  Now you can retain some continuity of staff and expertise, simply because you have other work to give them.  

This sort of thing has been done before; this is how Boeing got into the light rail vehicle business.