Pick on the uniforms with "great sources" like U tube and CBS news. Bottom line is uniformed officers have very little to say about spending. They set requirements and assess then it's in the hands of the politicans. I've written ad-nauseam here about procurement and how the Congress and mostly the civilian leadership drive that train. Make it worse today where the leadership both uniformed and civilial try to run an organization that is essentially wasteful by nature like a business, pad the budget with non-military expenditures and add contractors replacing jobs formerly done by uniformed personnel and you have the waste.
Jorge - you are right on with this post. I do want to note that in many programs, developmental and production costs are either, underestimated, not known, or just plain lied about until we learn publically that the program is way over-budget, is late and lacks the required performance.
The F-35 (a case in point, especially the B version) is at the $335 billion level, is late and, the exhibits low performance. Now we either pony up more $$$, or cancel the program (and waste the "invested" funding).
The Army's cancelled Crusader artillery piece is another. The current mechanized artillery system is the upgraded Paladin M109-A system. Ironically, after cancelling the Paladin, the Army incorporated many of the advanced into the now cancelled XM1203 Non-Line-of-sight artillery system, also cancelled due to increasing costs.
We do need to get a handle on realistic costs and performance before embarking on expensive full-scale developmental programs.
