> It's clear it is not about actual defense of the US, but about extracting as much wealth as possible from all of us; the tax payers. I wouldn't say that's wh

> It's clear it is not about actual defense of the US, but about extracting as much wealth as possible from all of us; the tax payers. I wouldn't say that's what it's about. It's just that America's prevailing mindset about defense and weapon systems is 'performance at all costs' and 'if it's worth doing, it's worth overdoing'. So they don't set out to develop a weapon system that will perform well on the battlefield at some level of risk in exchange for a reasonable cost, they set out to build a weapon system that is absolutely dominant to the point of negligible risk on the battlefield. So every system coming down the pipe gets loaded up with every bell and whistle possible. Of course the defense industry actively lobbies for bleeding edge and expensive weapons systems. But the fact is that the military and congress are all about dominance, not competence. It makes sense to a degree. If you've got stealth bombers and the enemy doesn't, they may not want to start a war at all. But at a certain point your next-gen stealth bomber becomes so expensive and complex that it may never work properly or you can't field enough of them to make a difference. Or you've built something extremely expensive to perform a job that a plane 1/20th the cost can perform at little to no risk.