So, yes, it can be hard. Not sure about the pay in defense- you can be one of three people that know something, but with the way contracting goes I'm not sure it matters. Companies bid, supply some more or less random collection of resumes to 'prove' they have the skill set, somebody wins, they slap the cheapest people they can on the project, and so on. If you price yourself high the bid will have to be high, and the bean counters in Washington aren't going to recognize that you are the precious snowflake you know you really are ;) Probably the far better route there is as a contractor/consultant - they seemed to command arbitrarily big fees.