As it turns out, there's no shortage of goodwill towards the military industrial complex when people feel they're actually making the world a safer and better place.
The military-industrial complex exists for sure, but it's good to have high-tech arms when you need them.
The real problem is we spend TOO much money on defense compared to other needs. Do we really need so many aircraft carriers? Is that really what is required these days? Or submarines? Or even just soldiers. Defense is expensive.
With drones becoming the main way of warfare, I wonder if aircraft carriers are on their way out, the same way that WW2 was the last gasp for the battleship. Drones are cheaper, smaller, less vulnerable, less risk, less human loss of life, etc.
Fun fact, did you know the Gatling gun was invented to reduce the amount of people killed in war? Oops.
If US would engage in war with some big army, like Chinese, Russian or European their carriers will sunk every day.
Fortunately, the US military is investing heavily into these kinds of systems.
Big ships are vulnerable, but far from obsolete. There are many ways to break the kill chain before missile point defense comes into play. Lessons learned from battles in the congested Black Sea littorals don't necessarily have much relevance elsewhere.
Drone technology will continue to improve, but it's never going to be cheap to project power over long distances. The defense budget will continue to increase inexorably, until we hit a real fiscal crisis or just give up and decide to allow China to dominate.
The fact of the matter is that welfare and welfare alone is the highest expenditure by far, and any cuts anywhere else will be meaningless unless deep and permanent cuts are made to the welfare state.
Maybe if healthcare was sorted, all those profits not going into the system could go back into peoples pockets and there would be space for a little more tax to pay for welfare.
Give poor people money and they spend it, boosting the economy.