Thank God you made it. Your experience is far too common. I worked weapon development for years, and it was a nasty political farce that is still wasting billions and getting our guys killed. The word is getting out a lot faster though, and troops pay attention to real-world reports.
What we need to do is get our military veterans who are returning from our latest wars into good engineering schools and then get them into key R&D positions to develop our next generation of weapons and equipment. The combination of technical skills and operational experience should go a long way towards resolving the mess that we have had before.
The other reform would be to get away from "least bidder" choices when our kid's lives are on the line. We need the best, not the "most cost effective".