Yes, I’ve been involved in the procurement and sustainment of some fairly high dollar defense related instrumentation systems used in the test & evaluation side of things, and I can relate to what you’re saying. It’s easy to underestimate just how hard it is to keep complex equipment operational with all the supply chain and other issues that have to be anticipated and coordinated and all that. There is no ideal way to do this, and every approach has its tradeoffs. Our military industrial complex reminds me of the line about democracy that says it’s bad but it’s the least bad of the available options (or something like that). In my tiny little slice of that world I saw lots of dysfunction but also lots of diligence and overcoming of obstacles to make things work within that imperfect system, often with successful outcomes. Sometimes you just have to accept that an ugly win is still a win and that a system that generally produces wins of any kind given the extreme level of difficulty is a pretty good system in this imperfect world of ours.
It wasn’t always fun or pretty, but we could by-damn get a job done when we had to.
Today, I can picture some poor schlub telling a SMSgt that a plane is on hold while they wait for a sustainably sourced gasket to be procured from a minority or woman-owned business.