Arms tenders followed from requirement to delivery: bid evaluation, offset obligations, unit pricing, schedule slippage and the politics inside an award.
An economic price adjustment clause is a pre-negotiated escalator built into a fixed-price contract, and Federal Acquisition Regulation Part 16.203 is the rulebook that decides when the Pentagon may use one and how the price actually moves.
Offset commitments are enforced by auditors, banks of credits and damage clauses — quietly, confidentially, and with penalties the public record almost never prices.
A delivery schedule written into a contract is a promise; the export license is the permission, and the gap between the two — measured in weeks, months or congressional review periods — is where most arms-delivery delays are actually born.
A idle factory does not save money; it keeps charging rent, loses its trained hands and forgets its process — and the next lot inherits every one of those costs.
In Foreign Military Sales the signed Letter of Acceptance is the moment an offer becomes a binding government-to-government case, fixing prices, validity dates and a delivery schedule that can only change through formal amendment.
Contract type is the answer to one question — who pays when the estimate is wrong — and recent programs show both sides of that bargain in billion-dollar relief.