All of those skilled workers could have been building something useful, however. The waste of their time and skill is indeed burning resources, in an even more concrete sense than setting money on fire.
I wouldn't say the F-35 is useless. It contains a breathtaking integration of advanced technologies. There are benefits to that R&D. It's also an incredibly capable platform–the principle complaint is it's too capable, that we could have gotten more bang for our bucks with more less-capable planes.
You're right. After 28 years and $1 trillion it FINALLY delivered a single bomb in Afghanistan two weeks ago.
Not totally useless.
If something is overproduced, it accumulates and/or falls in price. There is no "crisis of overproduction," though there may be a "crisis of underinvestment in research" and "crisis of underemployment," both problems the American military budget addresses.
For Lockheed Martin. Are they obligated to publish their R&D findings for the Pentagon or anyone else?
Why aren't they doing it? Could it be because we don't optimize for 'overall value created'?
Either the tax money would have been collected anyway, and spent somewhere. Or the tax money would not have been collected and it would have been "naturally" allocated by the population.