On the other hand, a government organization might do a better job of keeping track of development goals over time. It might be slower than independent open source projects, but it would probably also be more stable than most Linux distros. Enterprise-level software has different requirements and different development cycles from consumer-level software. Having a competing option for Red Hat could only be a good thing.

I’d bet it would take a planification similar to building a nuclear reactor or an airport: over budget, blown over scheduled time, fulfilling specs on paper but not in spirit, and used only when people have no other option

It’s not as if they’d be starting from scratch, it would most likely still be Linux. But they might bring more focus to long-term stability and especially cybersecurity implementations to meet government security requirements.