I agree with what you say. Only thing I would add is. This is...

I agree with what you say. Only thing I would add is. This is government and with government contracts there record of doing anything when they say is poor. Pls correct me if I am wrong but was not the original date for submittals in late December and it has now been extended once? Would not be surprised if it slips again. Anything 165 days out is likely to slip.

LOOK at the process

I will agree I am very sarcastic but that comes from trying to get DARPA funds. Have seen DARPA take 2 , 3 and even 4 X longer than they originally said. JMO there is a correlation between the number of submittals and how long things will take. By US law and awards have to be considered by entire exec committee nothing can be dropped. For example lets assume 4 people are assigned to do initial evaluation and there are 8 proposals, they each read 2 and submit their questions back to company. Then they swap applications Each reads two and comes up with questions but now because they are thinking of first the questions become a little stranger and we now need to go back and forth for question clarification from this point it gets worse since people re now reading their 3 and forth proposal. Since the higher ups have to make a decision all applications must be summited up the chain none can be deleted.

Lets look at private industry. Say I have a job opening. I receive a Pile of resumes from personal. I divide them into a few equal piles by weight do not even count or pre read. I pick a few people to read the stacks. Next mourning We get together and everybody submits 0 ~ 2 resumes for further consideration. We copy the selected resumes Everybody reads all the remaining candidates. We get together Select 2 or 3 to interview a Week or two latter we make a decision. If all drop out which does happen we ask for more resumes repeat. If we fail after two rounds we get together and readjust what we are looking for, something is wrong. These are high paying high level engineering jobs.

Because government has a very high priority on being fair they take a long time. Industry has a priority on doing a good job and getting it done. If a good candidate gets missed that is ok Far more important to hire one of the top 3 than spend extra weeks trying to make sure you have Number one. you never know till they have worked for a period anyways. I have let a person I thought walked on water go after 30 days.