Valid, and something that became readily apparent once inside the belly of the acquisition beast. Contractors are incentivized to "ship it" and get paid, regardless of quality. The USG (civilian employees and military members) try to put up guardrails and speed bumps, but when push comes to shove, the contractors win. And it's on the USG to hope for the best, pick up the pieces, and try to make things work.
All of that, I accepted as part and parcel with the entire acquisitions ecosystem. However......
While the F-16 is a ~$25 mil a copy, and the ACES-II seat is ~$2mil a copy, the choices that made the difference between life and death in this case were on the order of tens of thousands of dollars. My experience was the USG civilians and uniformed personnel in the SPOs had little sway with the stuff involving big bucks. They could however move the needle significantly when the dollar values were small.
Somewhere in the forest of cubicles at Wright Patt or Hill, some Item Manager, Equipment Specialist, or Engineer could have made some noise about the availability of the shorting plug. They could have pushed the issue to the forefront, and it sounds like it's enough of a low-buck part that a company like Teledyne might have found another source just to make the USG shut up. Or, someone at Teledyne might have even taken notice, recognized the issue as well, and taken up the flag inside their company. While the company is incentivized by the almighty dollar, there are a lot of worker-bees punching a clock at these companies who really believe in what they're doing for the warfighter.
Same with the decisions on setting and subsequently extending the TCTO deadlines, and signing off on life extensions of the DRS. Someone with the USG who cares could have raised the red flag. A USG civilian could have refused to sign off on the extension. Everyone knows the trope about USG civilians being next to impossible to fire. There is very little standing in the way of those folks saying "No."
I spent the better part of my 20s and 30s in the belly of the beast, and I've had a good bit of time to reflect on it all. The Air Force has a literal army of civilians that are supposed to be managing all of this stuff, along with a smaller contingent of uniformed members. They're spread throughout the SPOs, Depots, etc. There is a tremendous amount of Make Work, and it's all very much a jobs program. In amongst the deadwood, seat-warmers, and oxygen thieves, there are also a lot of good people, who want to do what's best, and really believe in what they're doing on a day-to-day basis.
In amongst all the bullshit, every once in a great while, I got to see instances when something no shit really mattered. Events where technical decision making by a conference room full of pasty-faced nobody civilians had a real direct impact on people's lives. Real "figure out a way to fix the oxygen system or they'll die" Apollo 13 style shit. And I was always surprised. The bullshit got put aside, the bureaucracy was swept away, and Shit Got Done. If people were lucky, there were some back patting, and maybe a couple beers together after work. On rare occasion, six months later some people tangentially involved with it would get a meaningless award or two. Mostly though, the people who made the wins only had their own job satisfaction as a reward, but for those folks, it was enough.
It's not like there was a Big Red Button on the wall that someone pressed and everyone switched from bullshit-mode to get-down-to-work mode. It was more the fact that, as a whole, you collectively had enough people that gave a shit, that they were able to generate a critical mass to make something happen when it really mattered.
I spent ten years in that realm, and last turned in my badge about ten years ago. I watched the mass of the lets-get-it-done folks dwindle over my time, and I can only imagine it's continued to deteriorate. People retire or get sidelined. Merit no longer gets you promoted, and often it's not even political games that move you up anymore. The Drive for Diversity watered down a lot of the experience, up and down the org chart. Shouting matches over the proper technical solution used to be, not common, but not unheard of. Once it was resolved, the combatants would usually shake hands and go get lunch. That sort of thing would have you written up by HR now.
I'm just bitter about my own experiences as a cog in the wheel, how bad the whole enterprise was, and how much I saw it get worse over time. Events like the Shaw crash just get me dwelling on it all.
TL:DR: Contractors gonna contract, but I wonder if some cubicle-dwelling USG civilians cared enough and put their foot down, they could have prevented some of the "holes in the swiss cheese" of the Shaw crash.