alt Hacker NewsOn one hand you've got "what we procure needs to work for earthly climates with some error bars so that we don't wind up with a million dollars of stuff that doesn't work in Alaska"
And on the other end of the spectrum you've got "my company makes .001% of widgets that do X but we make 50% of widgets that do X at -200deg F so we'll have our lobbyists wine and dine the brass until that number starts showing up in the technical standards forcing anyone who's submitting an RFP to use our product".
And of course the latter always tries to pretend like it's the former. It's not an easy problem. Sometimes concerns are valid. Sometimes they're bullshit. Usually the peddlers of bullshit believe their own bullshit.
Often people exposing fraud have incentive to ignore valid concerns.
The famous $600 hammer was a special non-sparking metal for use in an explosive environment. The famous expensive toilet seat was for use on the space shuttle (space station?). Both of these examples got a lot of press 30+ years ago, and it was years before the rest of the story got out.