I worked for an FFRDC on a DARPA project a bit more than a decade ago having to do with communication jammers. It was terribly managed. There were two projects going on at my organization that were basically the same thing but with two different PIs, teams, test beds, etc. We ended up wasting so much time and money doing non-R&D work with very little oversight from DARPA.
I honestly feel that US military money is thrown around like you said in such a fragmented way, that I can't imagine other countries NOT being an order of magnitude more efficient. It kind of reminds me of our healthcare spending and how much we spend but for such little ROI compared to other developed countries.
> I can't imagine other countries NOT being an order of magnitude more efficient.
I can. I imagine that, while the US military bureaucracy is horrible, it is not uniquely horrible. Other countries have bureaucracies, too, and they are not an order of magnitude better than the US ones.
Or so I imagine. I confess that I have no first-hand experience with non-US military R&D bureaucracies.
Exactly. It's like saying healthcare is big business in America when it's because it's unnecessarily bloated and super inefficient only due to America's own idiosyncratic quirks and regulatory capture. Like there are countries with similar private systems which still manage to do better with far less resources, simply because they have some form of government oversight.
I honestly feel that US military money is thrown around like you said in such a fragmented way, that I can't imagine other countries NOT being an order of magnitude more efficient. It kind of reminds me of our healthcare spending and how much we spend but for such little ROI compared to other developed countries.