As a result, they frequently wind up buying the right toys, even if for the wrong reasons.

I'm skeptical, James. I think rather that if you shoot enough spitballs some of them inevitably stick on the wall. The number of defense projects is really vast although not as vast as they used to be.

However, I want to repeat my argument in favor of these “toys”. If we want to have tank-building companies, we've got to place orders for tanks. If we want to have companies that build military aircraft, we've got to place orders for military aircraft. And so on.

The complexity of today's military equipment means that producing them requires skills that are cultivated over a period of years, even decades and can't readily be duplicated in the civilian equipment world.

We've got a lot fewer of these companies than we had 40 years ago and that's appropriate

Congress, meanwhile, has an incentive to simply buy the best equipment they can.

Really ? Or do they have the incentive to buy the equipment that benefits the most Congressional districts ? Or that benefits the most campaign-contributing defense contractors ?

I agree with your point about military bureaucrats, but I don't think there's any reason to believe that the men and women in Congress are any better at accurately assessing our military needs.