Comment Recommended reading (Score 1) 9
"The Spoils of War" by Andrew Cockburn. Goes way back to American soldiers having to steal boots off dead Chinese soldiers in Korea to get decent boots, their feet were freezing off.
"The Pentagon Wars" by Col. James F Burton. Burton was part of the 1980s "Fighter Mafia" who got the F-16 built, against Pentagon tendencies for every new plane to be twice the weight and twice the cost of the last one. (The F-35 continues the tradition.) They were the ones who publicized the $400 hammer and $600 toilet seat.
Cockburn laments that people thought it only applied to some things, when their point was that every $1 lightbulb on the console was $25 to replace.
Burton notes that one Army logistics guy got the price of a single uranium bullet down from $80 to $4 by whipsawing two suppliers into real competition, another reduction every purchasing round, for years. That guy gave a presentation to a roomful of Stars on it, and came back to his desk to find retirement papers waiting. Or a transfer to Thule. His choice.