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Comment by stanfordkid | Hacker News Reader

I think there is room in the market for an Elon Musk style entrepreneur to completely re-define the industry as was done by Space-X. I think defense filters out a lot of potential founders due to it's inherently bloody nature -- at the end of the day these are machines are designed to kill people efficiently, whatever the reason may be.

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With Space anyone can try to get there and prove their technology. There's even an event held once a year out in Nevada where you can show up with whatever rocket you want and try for it.

War fighting isn't the same, you can't prove your plane is good in combat on your own. You need a war and a side willing and able to fly it in combat.

Not much war happening these days that meaningfully test the F35

Bert Rutan tried to do that. Selling aircraft to the US military is a tough sell unless you're one of the big boys.

This is a kind way of saying that the defense industry and their sole customer are vertically integrated and serve as a way of transferring HUGE amounts of tax money into private hands without any accountability or real market forces at work of any kind.

The whole thing is a criminal enterprise designed to rob public funds and enrich a small group. It's been widely known for decades and everyone who thinks this is a bad thing is powerless to stop it.

It teaches one a lot about the true nature of the USA.

Well, part of this integration is inevitable. Defense materiel is so complicated, leading to high expenses that the DoD is required to manage vendors. Much of the aerospace consolidation that has happened in the past 30 years has been "encouraged" by the Pentagon as they think a smaller vendor can't really compete. At the same time, they want to preserve the industrial capacity so that they have flexibility when the military equivalent of the 737MAX strikes. That's why ULA is still around despite SpaceX kicking its butt.

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