Ha - I wasn't in the specialty. It was a company that had a tremendous variety to the work - vehicle mods, postal equipment, airborne stuff, missile launchers. It was like working for 20 companies or more over 30 years time without having to relocate. I enjoyed the constant challenge of solving unique problems.
Management had decided to take on a specialized area, specifically underbid on one project to get some credibility and then, having proved the company and the development pipeline, screwed up the next bid by not understanding the market. The second system was done in less time, with lower costs, significantly lower production problems and didn't make the money they wanted. It was through RDGT before the first system was. So everyone was feeling pretty good. And then - boom - they blew it up. It was like seeing the Statue of Liberty sticking up out of the sand in Planet of the Apes.
Even that would have been OK for the rest except we got spun off to a bunch of MBAs who gutted the operation over a series of spin-offs and sell-offs. Some were even sued for concealing side-deals as part of the sales and I think one went to jail.
Then there were the crippling hires of like-minded management who would think things like - money is tight, so let's build a new headquarters instead of staying in a building that's probably taxed $20 a year. (One year they put a for-sale sign on the building. I guess that established the commercial value of the property and should have been close to 0.)
Depending on the bid, some agencies will ignore bids that are too low to be real, but some will take anything and hope their legal department is better than any weasel supplier's lawyers.
Some places underbid and hope to make it up with spitefully following the requirements and then arm wrestle for contract mods and more money. Like one weasel company I dealt with which supplied encoders with a split-pinion. After some other production problems, one unit came in, the assembler removed it from the box, and the pinion fell off. Others were checked. Words were exchanged. They first claimed it was abused, but then noted that our requirements didn't have an 'axial retention requirement' for the gear. They also claimed that their parts were passivated even though rust was forming on them due to condensation (it was a 'special' treatment, which turned out to be in-process machining oil.) (24,000 words describing these losers omitted for brevity.)