Vantaggi
In my rough assessment, a third of the projects here are wild goose chases run by inept government bureacrats, a third are interesting research led by smart DARPA program managers (that mostly gets squandered because it never gets transitioned or published), and a third are boring engineering projects that don't involve any research. So you have a decent job of doing work that's interesting or at least neutral.
Svantaggi
Typical cynical government contractor. Cliquish internal politics, nerd machismo, management tells you what you want to hear and then flips the script on you, in my opinion managers and senior engineers have unchecked toxic masculinity issues. Lack of gender balance and inattention to fixing it. The key to understanding this place, in my opinion, is that all that matters at the end of the day is bringing in contracts and making the government customer happy, even if it means doing work that one isn't proud of.