Gone are the days when Kelly Johnson would actually give back unspent money on aircraft development., I guess.
No doubt about that. In those days defense contractors did not make huge profit on defense contracts, in fact I believe they were contractually limited to make 5% to 8% profit. But now since most CEO pay packages are determined by quarterly profit margins, they have an incentive to lie cheat and steal so their pay packages are larger. Also, in Congress, people like McCain and Graham always talk a good game about making defense contractors keep their costs low but behind the scenes they’ve helped drive the acquisition changes at the Pentagon that have led to this mess.