Waste and inefficient spending in the DoD sphere is incredibly difficult to tackle. The article highlights two anecdotes/situations that are shared by the DoD and wider federal enterprise - that knowledge and power is generally actually incredibly diffuse across an organization, and therefore all changes require touching and gaining approval through a monstrous about of stakeholders, and that vendors can be giant dicks.

DoD challenges are compounded by being tasked to do relatively unique things for the American public. What is a reasonable price to pay for a training exercise where Marines actually get to deploy a anti ship missile battery onto a lonely Pacific Island? Is the incremental cost of 3 versus 2 of these exercises a year worth while? Valuing many of things the military does, both in terms of what their positive value is, as well as what their costs -should- be is difficult, since we have so little analogous scenarios to draw on.

Without confident and broadly consensus (or at least with sufficient top level cover and firepower) valuations on benefits and costs, any attempt to reduce spending just slams into resistance (both truly well meaning, as well as reflexive and self-serving).

Another major DoD challenge is that outside of the IT field, the DoD asks for industrial competency and competitiveness that frankly the overall US industrial base looks to barely be able to meet. And so not only is it inflicted by vendors acting like dicks, they're inflicted by incompetent vendors acting like dicks.