The issue I have is the only solution ever presented is to increase military spending. Our military (and government) is grossly inefficient and mismanaged but hey why try making it more efficient when we can throw more money at it.
What we need to do is fire half the useless brass wandering around the Pentagon drinking coffee and trying to look useful.
To me the biggest problem with the Department of Defense is the huge amounts of bloat.
And this is not the bloat of the "useless brass", but the amount of civilians that work for the department. Here are some numbers to consider.
The US military has around 1.3 million individuals on active duty. It has another 800,000 in the Guard and Reserves. In total, that makes 2.7 million people in uniform.
The civilian side of the DoD amounts to over 740,000 direct US Government employees. That means that there is 1 civilian working for just under 4 in uniform (less than 2 for every 1 on active duty). Then to make it worse, you literally have the uncounted number of contractors that work for the military. I am not talking about the Yoyodyne contractors who are making a new hypervelocity ballistic anti-sumbarine missile, but the ones doing everything from washing dishes and guarding gates to issuing room keys in the barracks and changing light bulbs. Most estimates are that amounts to another 800,00+ people on the payroll.
That means that for every individual in uniform, there is a civilian also on the payroll, directly or indirectly. That is the real problem.
Over the past 3 decades, the military has moved away from it's real job, and the DoD has become a workfare program for civilians.
I have long thought that the Government needs to take an axe to the DoD and fire 2/3 of this civilian workforce. Most of those jobs can be done cheaper and more efficiantly by those in uniform, so let them do their job.
Back in the 1980's, we did not have anywhere near this many civilians. And every month we were given lists of "working parties" for the base or unit that we had to give up people to perform. It might be mowing grass, or washing dishes in the chow hall (dreaded "KP), or running the base gym or theater. Some of them were even highly coveted positions, like working at the base stable or scuba locker. Others spent the time driving the base bus or running office mail from one base-building to another (remember this was the era before the Internet).
But today, all of those jobs and more are done by civilians. Why in the hell are we paying some civilian to wash dishes at $12 an hour when we have privates sitting around doing nothing that can do it for free? Why are we paying civilians to guard our gates when it is our base and we should be doing that? Why are we paying civilians $20+ an hour to check in and issue basic gear like sleeping bags and ruck sacks instead of having supply sergeants doing the job?
That has become the real problem with the DoD. When I went back into the military in 2007, I was shocked at the number of civilians doing "our" jobs. And no joke, we could not even change lightbulbs. Somehow the Union civilian electricians convinced the military that changing lightbulbs was a dangerous job (it deals with electricity and hazardous waste), therefore only a trained Union electrician could do the job. So we had multiple 2 man teams which drove around Fort Bliss doing nothing but changing lightbulbs.
Something that decades earlier would have had the sergeant going "Private Schmuckatelli, go get a bulb from Supply and change it". Now we have to call Public Works, and wait 2-7 days for 2 civilians to finally show up and do that job.