Ironically, the turning-point came earlier this year, when it was suggested that, as the supply of Treasury bonds dwindles thanks to the federal government's surplus, mortgage-agency debt could replace them as the benchmark used for pricing other fixed-income securities.

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Usage-based pricing with no fixed contracts or contracts with renewable terms as short as 30 days.

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Yet the majority of survey respondents (about 60%) said that the outcome-based model with its fixed fee pricing is more effective.

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The losers promptly launched a legal protest that was partially successful, but on the crucial issue of price realism government lawyers ruled that the Army was under no obligation to investigate how realistic Oshkosh pricing was since with a fixed-price contract the company would be obligated to absorb any overruns.

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