Really, you ought to learn something about this before you spout off. Try reading an article by Jacques Gansler, one of the noted students of defense spending (and a critic, by the way) called “How the Pentagon Buys Fruitcake.” 90% of the “waste” is through government requirements for fairness and open competition-—when sole source can be much better (there are good studies, which I bet you could care less about, about the Sparrow vs. Sidewinder missile)-—than competitive bid. Just knowing the history of the Trident, when the government expected Electric Boat to “invest” $400 MILLION with no guarantee of anything past the first four boats (which would have been a massive loss) is ridiculous.
I'm sure no one was being forced at the end of a gun to invest $400 million and if they made such ludicrous demands as you said and all they heard back was the chirping of crickets, then I'm sure they would have re-evaluated their requirements. Why should market forces not be allowed to work??? Once again you could no sooner keep a CEO away from an Everest sized pile of cash than you could shoo away all the flies trying to land on a huge pile of manure. I'll bet you though, that had General Dynamics said go pound sand, that some other company would have stepped up and filled the void, and they knew that, so they built the submarines.
Please don't expect me to feel sorry for a company with annual revenues of $19.4 Biliion. Didn't they recently get a contract to convert 4 of these into Tomahawk missile submarines at a cost of $800 million a piece??? According to my math that's $3.2 Billion, doesn't make an investment of $400 million seem too bad at all. Wait I can barely type through the tears in my eyes over General Dynamics predicament.