Oh most definitely. The tender process is awful from start to finish, regardless of market. If nothing else, as you say, it funnels huge amounts of resource away from where it needs to go (the product, developers and engineers) and into the pockets of salesmen, managers and shareholders. It just doesn't make sense for public money.

But MVPs aren't always themselves a viable development target... Especially here in a military scenario where the finished product tends to be the MVP. Safe enough and hopefully effective.