Point taken, the civil servants may not make the procurement decisions, those are left to the senior officers and more often politicians with ulterior motives. However, the civil servants are responsible for drawing up contracts and ensuring compliance to said contracts. In addition they monitor progress and spend on projects and more often than not have a heavy hand in acceptance of inappropriate or defective equipment.
Its about time defence procurement contracts reflected penalty clauses for industry's over run or non-compliance with specification etc, and not just penatly clauses tieing the MOD into buy the end product regardless of result