The Navy has made several rookie procurement boners in the last couple of decades, order new technologies to production before adequate proof-of-concept and mission testing.
Reliance on contractors sounds like a good idea for cost saving and flexibility, but, they are private companies incented to make profit by aspiring to the lowest common denominator.
Around late 1990s / early 2000s, software companies were selling non-existent products to customers on the basis of promises comprised of many buzzwords that were euphemisms for nothing. We called these things "vaporware". Basically, the vendor was going to charge the customer to develop, test, and deploy a non-existent, unproven product. Needless to say, many of these years-long projects ended up in the waste bins of failed IT projects.