While the military industrial complex is rightly criticized from a moral perspective, it’s not likely to be reined in anytime soon until the economic incentives you speak of are addressed. I’m not sure that there’s an easy solution, but perhaps our government should start by insisting that large military companies be diversified, with plans to convert their defense production to other purposes during down-times.
“...with plans to convert their defense production to other purposes during down-times.”
Trust me on this, there is zero other purposes for 90% of military equipment. Let’s start with encryption. That’s an absolute no. Then there’s what the equipment is produced from, military parts most of which have no dual use. There’s no need, for example, for parts that have a full mil range temperature and those are EXPENSIVE. There usually aren’t any civilian substitutes. And where exactly would you alternatively use a frequency hopping radio? Stuff designed specifically for the military, for the most part, can’t be economically built for some other purpose. Also, none of the parts for a vehicle or carried item can be used for anything else. The boxes in your car or on a civilian plane are engineered differently and use different non-mil (less expensive and more generally available) technology. You may be shocked to find this out. Despite some of the amazing things the military tech can do is built from old, often out of production stuff that’s a generation or two behind the civilian market. Stuff built for a cell phone is built entirely by automation and from cutting edge parts. This is so because cell phones are built in the hundreds of millions. Car parts are built in the tens of thousands. Stuff for the military is generally built in the tens, if you have a wonderful contract. I’ve built stuff that was just a one-off. The price tag comes with a rocket attached.
Military companies are very difficult to run. A lot of the places I worked had just one...one, production contract. A fubar like Congress is pulling now with the budget would probably mean we’d have gone out of business. Military companies do not finance stuff on the off hope that Congress will authorize the purchase when the get off their ass and fund it. Often, somebody decides they don’t need it and you just wasted a million dollars. (Incidentally, it’s against the law to build anything for the military that isn’t funded.)
On the budget now, that everyone wants stopped because it does or does not do something, it’s been held up long enough that companies I have worked for would have gone under by now. That means laying off people who can’t be easily replaced. Once you shut down a factory you have a huge restart price. The fact there was no budget for so long is going to have very bad long-term impacts. We, the people are going to pay much, much more because Congress played politics with the budget.
Not one article I’ve read even addressed the horrible outcomes of this political snafu.