Remember those $700 hammers back in the 1980s? Those things really happen in government spending and it isn't just the DoD that does it. A lot of this is due to "gold-plating" - setting requirements so high that off-the-shelf products aren't acceptable so expensive custom products are necessary. NASA is infamous for this as are many government agenceis. For example, Tom has posted many times examples of government specification absurdity like 700 word descriptions of a tomato.

Back in the 1970s, one of my classmates in electronics school (a retired Army pilot) told me about how you could go to any store and buy a single roll of toilet paper for 5 cents. The governmnet bought toilet paper by the trainload and paid 7 cents a roll. Many government purchases have to be made through the GSA, a horribly inefficient and bureaucratic outfit.

Here's a more recent example that happened to my office. We just set up a new facility with all new computers, multiple teleconferencing centers, etc. Each of our computers came with a 64 MB USP memory stick. They're damned handy. You can buy them (after rebate) for about $10-20 at any computer store. The government paid $90 each (and we got about 30 of them). You see, we weren't allowed to go to ordinary computer stores to purchase our systems. Instead, we were required to go through GSA, hence the higher price.

Government is notoriously inefficient. Why worry about price when you can always go back to the taxpayers for more money? I recently had to get a standard government email account as part of the move to my new office. I estimate that the account has cost over $500 just for the hours of hassle I've had to go through. That won't be the final price, either, because there are more hoops to jump through before we're done.

So, how much will the lifesaving paint brush end up costing? Well, if they follow NASA regulations for things like flame resistance, it probably couldn't be an off-the-shelf product. By the time you write the specifications, hold a competitive acquisition, perform the compliance testing, etc, the price will likely be several hundred dollars each. You think I'm kidding? I wish I were.