I work as a defense contractor, AKA "Bloodsucking Contractor Scum". I see examples of waste and inefficiency every day. As but one trivial example, in just the last week, I spent several hours jumping through bureaucratic hoops trying to get an email account. The fully loaded cost of my labor to get that account easily exceeded $300. We're struggling to open a new government office. Don't even ask about the headaches I've gone through in the past few weeks with that project. The resulting profanity would be too much even for the Flames board.

For the past 17 months, I've been working on a project to build an integrated architecture for space situational awareness (SSA). In the 46 years since Sputnik, dozens of military space systems were created. The buzzword that was in vogue when they were established was "vertical integration." Today, we know these systems as stovepipes. They can each do their intended mission but they don't communicate with one another worth a damn. In Cheyenne Mountain (NORAD headquarters), operators have to gather info from 4 or more separate stovepiped systems in order to mentally fuse an image of what is going on. We're trying to change all that. It isn't easy, either from a technical, political, or financial perspective.

There is a lot of needless duplication in the military. For example, do we really need 5 air forces? The Army doesn't trust the Air Force, so it operates its own fleet of aircraft (mostly helicopters). The Navy and Marines each have their own air arms, and so does the Coast Guard. Each of the services has its own unique needs, but there's still a lot of needless duplication. This is but one example.

The article was somewhat off base IMO in some regards. For example, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter is intended to replace the A-10, F-16, AV-8B, and F/A-18s up through the D model. Unlike what the article claims, the F-35 isn't intended to be an air superiority fighter any more than the F-16 or F/A-18. Instead, it's primarily intended to be a ground attack (hence the "Strike" in the name) plane with some air-to-air capabilities (like the F-16). Combat aircraft like the F-16 are designed for a finite life. Extending beyond that life involves some complicated and expensive upgrades (as has been performed on the B-52s many times over their 40+ years of service). If the F-35 lives up to its promise, it'll have a great deal of commonality in systems (primarily engines, avionics, and weapons) between the Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps. This is a good thing (if it works). The F-22 is a lot more controversial, but keep in mind that the F-15 was designed in the late 1960s/early 1970s and can only be upgraded so far to meet future needs.

Likewise, I believe his comments on stealth were somewhat off base. Stealth allows one or two planes to accomplish a mission that used to take a much larger strike package to accomplish. Stealthy planes can go in without EW planes like the aging EA-6B. If they can't be detected, then they can concentrate on hitting the target instead of avoiding getting shot in the ass. This tends to increase accuracy wonderfully.

The author goes back to the Korean War to find a defense budget comparable in size to the one for this year. I'm not certain that's a reasonable comparison. A high percentage of the weapons used in the Korean War were WWII surplus (virtually all of the ships, all of the rifles, bombs and ammo, and a high percentage of the planes). A significant percentage of the current costs are to buy things like high percision ordance (JDAMS, etc) to replace that consumed in the war. The radical increases in accuracy has enormous benefits. For example, in WWII, we had to send out 1000 bomber raids (each plane carrying 9-10 men) escorted by hundreds of fighters to have a reasonable chance of putting a handful of bombs on a specified target. The rest of the bombs landed all over the place, frequently killing thousands of civilians. Today, a single F-15E with a crew of two can not only hit that target, it can proceed on to take out other targets on the same mission. Back to the Korean War analogy, our top line fighter back then was the F-86. It was a great plane for the day, but today, it wouldn't even make a good trainer.

Back to the central point, I believe there are things that can be done to reduce military spending. For one thing, we can rebase the tens of thousands of military personnel currently "protecting" Western Europe and put them where they're needed. If Western Europe needs protection, then they should do what is necessary to protect themselves. Otherwise, the second part of your post about them "putting us down" is rather moot. They can't even protect themselves, so how can they possibly put us down?