> It’s very easy to throw rocks at the greedy contractors, but I think the military is almost completely responsible for these costs. The acquisitions and contracting offices create these unfavorable deals, usually because of risk aversion and ignorance.

And outsourcing. The military doesn't want to hold inventory on these things, either.

So, the military wants to offload everything and then is so very upset that they have no leverage and get overcharged.

The solution is straightforward: in-house manufacturing capacity. Suddenly you have leverage against the contractors. And, since this is the military, they can make that change by command fiat. But they won't.

Outsourcing is only useful when doing it internally is an alternative. Once the external companies know that you've lost that ability to do it yourself and can't threaten them anymore, they're going to squeeze you for every red cent they can.