When one of my vehicles was damaged I would drop it off at the motor pool. Then it would vanish into the support abyss. A few weeks-usually a few months-later I’d have a fixed vehicle or a new vehicle. Turns out one of two things happen. It gets evaluated for damage and if its below a certain threshold then my unit’s mechanics take a whack at it and fix it. If its over that threshold then it gets turned in to civilians who then take several months to fix/replace the vehicle. The excitement comes when you go to turn in the vehicle and the civilians use the subjective criteria to determine that your bent frame rail isn’t quite bent enough for them to take it, “Sorry, this doesn’t meet the criteria for us to fix.” You then spend as long as you can tolerate arguing with them about the degree of damage to a vehicle knowing full well that you don’t stand a chance of winning. The unspoken truth over here is that civilians run the show. Somehow, eventually(sometimes 6 months or more), the truck gets fixed or replaced but its a nightmare, a logistical nightmare really.
The problem with out sourcing is there is no real unity of command. Two separate parties to a contract have a lot different relationship then a bunch of people who are on the same team. No amount of rhetoric and no amount tweaking to a contract can change this fact. Cooperations that outsource core operations often run into problems for similar reasons.