When Eisenhower warned of the perils of the "military-industrial complex" he was including the Pentagon as part of the equation. Well...the Pentagon not too surprisingly has become irrelevant.
The folks who used to love to buy every expensive toy offered by the industrial side (and have lost every major war in my lifetime largely from bringing the wrong mindset/strategy/toys to the conflict) are now backseat players to the defense toy-making industry and most specifically to the House Armed Services Committee which is the key holder of purse strings for things that go "boom" (but not always on cue). Campaign contributions are the rule -- to heck with deficits or reduced spending on the single biggest item in the US Federal budget
To the Pentagon's credit they have tried to redirect some of the fire hose of money that Congress keeps pouring on them, but it looks like no one is listening to them any more. Sometimes they literally take the "gifts" of toys they don't want or need and park them in the desert or in the mountains.
More often now Congress just tells them to "shut up and take the money because it is good for my campaign treasury".
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