I think this is just moving the payment model from capex to opex.
Many govt contracts are upfront huge capital costs, and then long maintenance contracts which you are locked to that vendor for x years term even though you "own" the software.
Subscription just spreads those fees somewhat evenly across the term
I agree! What people don't realize are the lucrative parts of a govt contract is the follow on contracts to support. You don't make money on the initial design of a plane, you make money on adding weapons and fixing bugs for the next 25+ years of the planes life.
By having the development be a subscription, you also incentivize more continuous development and improvement of the product. For example, instead of designing the system, deploying it, and then have to negotiate a ton of PRs to fix the system after the fact, you can have a more continuous dev cycle, fixing the issues as they come up because you're on contract already to fix them.
Many govt contracts are upfront huge capital costs, and then long maintenance contracts which you are locked to that vendor for x years term even though you "own" the software.
Subscription just spreads those fees somewhat evenly across the term