Military: procurement, part 1: night-vision binoculars

Self-tutoring about defense spending: the tutor looks into a situation of procurement.

I’m not in the military, but it’s a world I’m familiar with. Back in the 90s it seemed to be dying; today, it seems to be ramping up. It can make for interesting news.

CBC, in this article here, seems to report that a 100Million dollar contract for night-vision binoculars might go to a US supplier. One alleged reason is that a peculiar specification narrows out other competition.

The method of selecting a peculiar feature of a particular product, then writing it into the tender, can be used to pre-select the winner of a bidding process. Apparently, the tender in this situation is being reviewed.

It seems that the potential supplier who has questioned the situation is European.