[rmb173rd]

Respectfully, the problem is not incompetence or bureaucracy. There's plenty of each in the military but they are only symptoms.

I like the Stanford Beer quote - "The purpose of a system is what it does".

What does the current defense acquisition system reliably produce? Obscene amounts of money for the defense contractors, campaign contributions for politicians, promotions and well-paid private sector careers for the top military leadership. The quality and suitability of its weapon systems, though sometimes excellent, is secondary.

All people who matter in this system, the ones who built and sustain it, are rewarded by the status quo. It's working exactly as intended.

[cjbgkagh]

The poor incentive structure is what results in incompetence and bureaucracy. I personally would measure competence with respect to stated aims, not some unstated aim.

If we are to assume the unstated aim is long term wealth extraction then I would again suggest the current extent of short term wealth extraction is putting that long term at serious risk so I would not consider that competence either. I would consider it an emergent behaviour where two or more parasites have to compete against each other for resources from the host, each has the very strong intensive to maximise their personal take even at the risk of the killing host because to leave anything on the table is to allow the competition to have more resources which they will use to attack you with.

Perhaps if the intent is to undermine the US as part of some broader strategic goal, OK, maybe those people are competent, but I would hope that those people are a very very small number of those operating in the system.

[guzfip]

Seems to be jobs program. I ended up in defense after a year of being out of work and while all the new grads were desperate and destitute, we were steadily hiring new juniors out of school.

I’ve heard stories from years ago about some of the waste being protected because it we weren’t producing tanks in excess of what we need, some small town in Ohio would lose a ton of jobs and their congressmen his job.

[p_ing]

Outside of wartime, yes these are jobs programs. If we stop, we lose the know-how, man-power, and facilities. Starting back up becomes expensive, time consuming, and potentially impossible on the time scales required. That does not bode well for a war you're involved in.