The DoD is as good as it gets in government spending. Yes, there is waste - but NO government program will ever be run without waste. Nor is there any way to identify the waste. Is the spending on UAVs a good investment in the future, or a waste of money? How many men do we need in the Army, and what spending will keep those levels?
Those are judgment calls, and no one has perfect judgment. Nor can we use competition & have multiple militaries competing with each other.
I worked at 12th AF before I retired. I thought it totally useless, but I doubt everyone else agrees.
Also, the military is almost trivial in government spending. If you totally eliminated the military, our deficit would still be higher than it was under GWB! The REAL money lies in entitlements. Without cutting those, no significant cuts will happen.
The Defense budget is 663 billion, or 1/5 of the entire federal government. That is hardly trivial.
There are 4 million Federal employees. If their average salary was 100,000 and we fired every single one of them, we would cut 400 billion, which is only 2/3 of the defense budget. The three monsters (20% of the budget) are defense, medicare/caid, and social security. If you add in debt interest, those four payments would equal 70% of the budget. Those are the four things that have to be looked at first if you actually want to reduce government spending.
You have valid points, and I agree that all the money is in entitlements. I believe the cuts Rand has in mind are meant to be symbolic. They will make going after things like entitlements a little more palatable imo. Sorry wasn’t trying to be snarky with my original post.