Oligopolies are a universal phenomenon in military manufacturing as only massive enterprises have the scale to deliver to the requirements - so this is unlikely to be the cause of the ills described in the article.<p>The most significant problem might be - counterintuitively - the guaranteed and consistent over budgeting. Imagine if every year your company's IT budget inflated by 100%, regardless of what you spent it on, or what the actual business requirement was. You're going to end up searching for ways to spend the money, over paying for overly complicated products and pursuing all sorts of boondoggles which clutter the strategic vision. The guaranteed budgetary increases destroys budgetary discipline and corrupts the entire system and its products.<p>Given that its politically impossible to cut the budget, the US military is in a bind of its making, with the only way out might perversely be to actually to start a war(s) in order to raise expenditure against this guaranteed income
I’m very concerned about or supply chain issues as the article mentions. Moving huge portions of our manufacturing to China has made us incredibly vulnerable. I imagine that’s why Russia and China are ratcheting up now
> After decades of consolidation, the industry suffers from a paucity of competition and lacks the kind of “surge capacity” needed to wage major industrial wars.<p>During WW2 Kodak and IBM among others were making rifles. The "surge capacity" comes from a healthy manufacturing economy, which China has and the USA no longer does.