Let me try and help shed some light on the “why” of funding…

Though I know this might be upsetting to some.

The chart above shows some general terms of how the decision and action matrix works for acquisition decisions across a range of variables, but this is mainly depicting cost as the central organizing metric.

General (vague) rules of thumb of the Acquisition landscape:
1- Higher Headquarters (HHQ) and Programs of Record (PoR) do the really big expensive purchasing actions
2- Units, due to their limited budgets, mostly make purchases under $500K total
3- There is a very big swath of products that are too expensive for a single unit, and not so crazy expensive that only a few high level organizations can afford to pay the bill, so arguments ensue

Best advice for success in funding procurement:
1- The higher the priority of the military requirement that the widget is looking to address the better
2- The more effective the impact of the widget on the requirement accomplishment the better
3- It is easier to get total funding of less than $500K from a single unit, or over $10M from a HHQ or PoR, than anything in between (easier should not be confused with easy)
4- Funding is the hardest to get when projects live in the middle of every variable of consideration, you want to pursue projects in the extremes for success

Ultimately this is why for example the endless number of software systems for support functions being pitched to the military both by innovators and companies never get sustainment funding, but weapons systems and individual field equipment still get purchased year after year. As a result despite the most profitable commercial tech companies in the USA like Google, Amazon, and Apple (who all provide some amount and type of support products and services to the government/military) are awarded only a fraction of the gov't/mil funding of the top 10 military arms and services companies in the world.