This attitude makes sense to me, given the revealed preferences of the electorate. They exert a lot of political pressure per US soldier combat death, and very

This attitude makes sense to me, given the revealed preferences of the electorate. They exert a lot of political pressure per US soldier combat death, and very little per wasted dollar of military R&D and equipment purchasing waste. Flip the incentives around, where war material is politically expensive and combat casualties are cheap, and you wind up with something much closer to what the Soviets did.