Biggus / Phil_R / Small Spinner
I welcomed your comments as reasoned and well argued. Personally I have spent time on both sides of the fence, both in a blue suit (where we used to refer to "British Wasteofspace") and in a shirt and tie under British Aerospace and BAE Systems. I have numerous colleagues who have been in similar situations, and I can't think of one of them who has not expressed their frustration at one time or another at the process we have to go through to create the products to support our armed forces.
One of the biggest problems I find on long term projects is that the customer changes at regular intervals, as project office officers get posted. As one gets near the end of their posting they will be very averse to agreeing or signing for anything, and when the new guy (or gal) takes over they want changes made to suit their interpretation of requirements. All this adds time and cost to projects.
Saying that, I still find managers who don't understand the customer and how they operate. One of my current tasks involves presenting training to staff on a specialist engineering field, and I often drop in war stories about how we should design products to withstand what we term as "reasonable misuse". The military customer does not operate in an office environment, and until that is understood then the products we build will continue to fall short of expectations.
In short, before you start blaming the other side for poor performance I suggest you FULLY understand what they have to go through, and then ask yourself if you are helping or hindering their performance by your actions!