[nocoment]

When you put it like that, paying for such oversight is well worth it. Would the military request less if it was more efficient or would it keep its budget and just fight (== exchange GDP for the "benefit" of additional limitless risk) on more simultaneous fronts?

Really, I don't see that many private sector companies competing on the big contracts no matter what you do. But for the smaller profit and more general purpose projects, the problem is that their purchasers interfere with the process to get what they want/need as the buyer. For example, they needed our systems and we didn't much care about learning their processes, so an Aerospace seemed to take the bulk of the profits by making a package that depended on us.

If the system were equally complex yet more transparent/published and tamper resistant then I don't think corruption would be so rampant and cost may at least be allocated to regular companies that choose to navigate them alone. But with no system at all, I think the Aerospace that took most of the profits would have taken even more and delivered still less.