I love the “spend smarter” bullshit when the Pentagon has failed 6 straight audits — and there have only been 6. The audits aren’t even hard to pass. There’s nothing about no-bid contracts, cost-plus contracts, or any Military-Industrial-Complex-related corruption.
If we actually “spent smarter,” nearly a trillion dollars a year1 would be fucking plenty. It’s already twice as much as Russia and China combined.
1 Probably over a trillion if you count the Department of Veterans Affairs, intelligence agencies, and other military-related things that aren’t under DoD.
Surely that's some of it it no doubt... but also a terrifying possibility is that they legit don't know at all, like it's a real money hole that stuff comes in vs. out and they have no idea at all where it went... (as opposed to someone knowing but not wanting to say)
wtf is going on in this dudes head that he thinks we should try to match combined Russian and Chinese nuclear arsenals without increasing defense spending...? Nukes got cheap or something? Does he want nukes to get cheap?
These people can't think past simple number totals. Number of nukes. Number of ships. Number of soldiers. He's never heard of quality vs quantity or technological superiority? Superiority in tactics, strategy, morale, any of that? Just sheer mass?
I mean, yeah, we can probably save some money with improved procurement practices, but not that much. A nuclear powered aircraft carrier is still basically a floating city, the things ain't cheap.