I guess that's what the American military is about ? Ok, I respect the opinion.

It is. Used to be about "jobs", building things DoD didn't want or need. Congress kept buying more F-14s, even though the Navy didn't want them, to keep the Grumman plant in Bethpage going. That nonsense didn't stop until then SecDef Cheney ordered the tooling, which the Navy owned, destroyed. Same thing went on with the C-17.

Saint Reagan came into office in a recession. Newsweek added up the unemployment rate, and Reagan's military build up, and ran a cover story "Reagan's jobs program".

Of course, the US is much Shinier now. Now the program is to milk the R&D phase, but never actually build much of anything. We got, what, 100 B-1s, for all the money spent on the program. 20-B2s. 195 F-22s. 3 Zumwalt class DDs. The Constellation class Frigate program was cancelled when a big pile of money had been spent, but they had barely started welding the first ship together. Between the time the F-35 was first ordered, and they got the thing sorted out enough to really start production, nearly 20 years had lapsed. And, as soon as production started, I started hearing a drumbeat for cancelling the F-35, and starting over with a clean sheet.

I remember seeing the Senator from Bath Iron Works, when the Zumwalts were cancelled, in her distinctively whiny way of speaking, crying about "jobs".

Steve