One other thing, when the cold war ended the government paid the defense contractors to merge. This killed both competition and innovation. We don’t know what we lost when there was no more Hughes Aircraft Company or Grumman or McDonnell.
Not sure if the government “paid” them to merge. I’d have to see the DoD budget to verify.
As I see it, the defense budgets were significantly reduced because we were not buying as much and not investing as much as before, therefore, multiple defense contractors could not survive.
Lack of competition is certainly a bad thing, for sure.