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“Good, unless you consider gutting the military as a bad thing.”

You could protect the country and even engage in a flat-out war for much less than the present budget. The cost of everything is higher because:
1. Purchases are spread like peanut butter across as many Senator’s districts as possible.
2. Defense allocations are on a year to year basis, not for the entire project. This means there’s no investment in automation. Everything is practically a custom make one-off.
3. Contracts require ridiculous set-asides for special interest groups.
4. Contracts require ludicrous “greenness.”
5. Congress wrote laws requiring the taxpayers to pay for attorneys for special interest individuals and groups that feel wronged so they can sue a company without spending their own money or even having a legitimate case.
6. Contracts require ludicrous tests that go WAY beyond reasonable. (Why would you test 200 hammers to destruction?)
7. The military diddles in every phase of the contract thus increasing costs.
8. The military keeps moving the target for their own political reasons. (A fighter plane must now be a bomber, a recognizance platform and a be able to plow 40 acres for planting in 15 seconds.) And, they want all of that demonstrated with the first model. You just went from a five year development effort to 15 years and then it’s obsolete and gets cancelled.
9. Oh, I almost forgot, EOE. You must have a certain percentage of highly compensated black executives and engineers. (I have known some who pulled their weight. But most of the ones I’ve known were there for decoration; sucking up charge numbers and contributing nothing. They usually head up the mandatory “diversity” program.)
The list goes on and on. But nothing will be done to correct these deficiencies because each deficiency has a constituency of its own who will argue loudly and persuasively (the Senator; “money talks.)