The military feels the need to use every weapon in its inventory, whether it needs to or not, even if it means prematurely compromising military secrets or causing extravagant expenditure or unnecessary confusion on the battlefield. Partly this is for good reasons: training, testing, and so on. It certainly makes sense to work out the kinks in a weapon system in an real-world environment where results may not be life and death critical and backup systems are on hand. But partly it's for the worst of reasons: interservice rivalry, justification of absurd expenditures, publicity, and blatant career promotion.

In our desire to glorify our military, we often tend to forget they are the worst and most cumbersome government bureaucracy of them all.