Well, no, that's not how it was intended, just how the courts have construed very specific language to the contrary.

I've (well, my company) paid $3k for a one-week course in CompTIA certification tracks. I don't see $15k as being outlandish, given what other certification courses cost.

My ME cost (my former company) about $36k, and while it was in Systems Engineering, from a highly ranked engineering school, it didn't teach me specifics about systems engineer, more the process and how to think about development. If these bootcamps really do saturate your mind with a thorough understanding of how to code, from start to finish, and a person is able to process and retain all that data, I think they're worth it. $15k worth of education that could, under the right circumstances net you a much larger return on investment seems pretty good, to me.

Developing inter-service global command, control, and communications systems, aimed at sharing satellite and other imagery between military branches.

Also, I didn't want to move to Florida, plus, this work is a hell of a lot more interesting than a logistics system.

Yep. In this day and age, the government has just increased the number of middle managers exponentially. I have so many that work on my project, it's insane, and there are only like...ten contractors!

You're correct on that, military personnel tend to go work for defense contractors, but why wouldn't they, and why wouldn't contractors want to hire them? They're coming out of an organization that provides exceptional training and establishes a respect for command and organization, and they typically start working on projects that they utilized while they were active duty. I can't tell you how much we learn from people that come out of the service, start working on our systems, and tell us how it's REALLY used in the fleet, rather than just how we INTEND for it to be used.

As someone that's in the contracting game, the reason that subs are used are that there are incentives for contractors to use subs from many different organizations. Some involve small businesses, some minority-owned businesses, some veteran-owned businesses, and some just related to states.

Industry can't meet requirements when the requirements are not nailed down until well in the development process. This is simple systems engineering. The government has decided that, despite throwing full support behind the SDLC, that they are exempt, and can change priorities and requirements, as they choose.

That is not correct, at all. DoD and government requires different organizations to be involved at all stages, regardless of what you think about a 'military-industrial complex'.

I agree with your assessment, 100%. For instance, the US Navy tried to replace their SLQ-32 electronic warfare suite, which has been around since the 1970s, in the 1990s. Because the system that was currently utilized worked, and worked well, they couldn't build a better system. Despite the ship sets not being built for decades, they're still in use, and when a ship that has a console is decommissioned, they pull the console from that ship and put it on a new, to-be-commissioned ship. All because they can't build a better replacement.

I used to work with his nephew. The real reason those two aircraft were so successful was that the government stayed out of Johnson's way, and just let his team do their damn jobs. The bureaucratic red tape, with dozens of 'project managers' doing the same thing, today, is absolutely ridiculous.

A huge portion of the delays come from two things, both on the government's end - 1) the government believes that you can start a development effort without hard requirements, and do the majority of testing with computer simulations, and 2) the government constantly changes requirements, even after designs are locked. I'm working a project right now, where the government won't authorize funding for hardware components, so the system requirements are there, mostly, but the engineers can't get a 'shipboard-like' environment to actually develop the system, yet they have to field it in October!

Well, their air defenses are AEGIS ships, equipped with SM-2 and SM-6 missiles, the latter of which are designed to take on those supersonic cruise missiles. It's the offensive capabilities you're more concerned with, upgrading Harpoon.

First, China has one carrier, and it is not operational, just a testing hulk used to develop the plans, procedures, and capabilities that the US developed in the 1920s. Second, the US has a dozen aircraft carriers, and they're protected in a battle group by many picket ships, including attack submarines, frigates, destroyers, cruisers, as well as an entire air wing. Force projection means that each of those picket ships stays well away from the carrier, but keep her within their protection envelope. The subs and frigates are very adept at anti-submarine warfare (ASW), while destroyers do both that and anti-air warfare (AAW). Cruisers do a bang-up job of AAW. On top of that, you have sentry aircraft that stay hundreds of miles in front of the carrier, all the time, and are always monitoring for enemy ships, aircraft, and submarines. Once they've spotted something, the two (or more) aircraft flying interdiction screens can move to intercept.

China has a military that is still working on things that the US developed in the 1970s. The difference is that they've got a lot more people.

The people that put out the RFPs (the government) are those bad hockey players. The people that designed and built the F-35 (contractors) are just doing what they're contracted to do. Government sets the requirements, industry meets them.

My only assumption is that they see the US as having ordained itself 'World Police' and enter conflicts without prompting or without an international 'consensus'.

That said, it was the UN that determined that the US military would be responsible for maintaining order and policing the world. Sure, the US military took the power, as any organization would, but I feel the real blame rests on the UN.