They actually regularly ask to be descoped in their annual budgets, but Congress refuses to undermine their own pork barrel. My favorite example is the Navy spending a decade to convince Congress to let them stop building the wildly useless littoral combat ships:<p><a href="https://news.usni.org/2023/06/12/hasc-agrees-to-navys-plans-to-shed-littoral-combat-ships-moves-to-abolish-cape" rel="nofollow">https://news.usni.org/2023/06/12/hasc-agrees-to-navys-plans-...</a><p>These ships are so bad the Navy actually plans to just give them to our allies to save money. Cheaper to just give them away.<p>I may be biased having worked in the DoD for over a decade, but the problem isn't the DoD, it's Congress. The DoD can only do what they're told, and Congress is the one who keeps telling them to burn money on useless shit no one wants. We dealt with that nonsense constantly, from ships to subs to planes, you name it.