Okay, since military procurement was brought up, I'll chime in on that one.
Now.
First, realize that you produced a video as "evidence" that was about as blatantly skewed as anything I've ever seen.
Once we've gotten that out of the way, we can continue.
Part of the problem with military procurement are the time scales involved in developing something so inordinately complex. The two projects that the guy mentioned were, specifically, the Crusader and the Comanche.
The Crusader was the ultimate expression of a weapon system originally intended to fight the Soviets in Eastern Europe, revamped in the mid-90s into a lighter-weight version that was intended to have a reasonable level of airmobile capability, in part do to the difficulties the US Army had in transporting equipment for the first Gulf War.
So the requirements for the Crusader were exceedingly high. It had to have MRSI capability, extremely high accuracy, be fast enough to keep up with an Abrams, and be light enough that two of them could be transported at a time on a C-17.
Unsurprisingly, it wound up being extremely expensive as a result, and once a vehicle hits a certain threshold of complexity, development takes time, and typically runs into difficulties. By the time the Crusader was ready for deployment, we were looking to get into Iraq, and the Army was starting to look at even more mobile systems, and the possibility of urban warfare where large, powerful artillery vehicles would be largely useless, and where a highly-accurate howitzer simply would not be accurate enough to avoid civilian casualties. So they canceled the project and moved resources into refurbishing existing hardware and developing guided artillery munitions.
Though, to be totally honest, I recall the program costing in the neighborhood of $10-12 billion when it was canceled; not the $40 billion quoted by the talking head.
Now, as for the helicopter.
The Comanche's development ultimately began in the 80's, and it was intended to serve as a replacement for a number of existing platforms, filling the role of a scout helicopter along with that of a light attack helicopter. And it had to have stealth capabilities, and all the other usual bells and whistles that people want it to have.
So, again. Very high requirements are set for the program. A lengthy design phase. And ultimately, by the time the system was ready to start deployment... the requirements had changed. A stealth helicopter was unnecessary; UAVs could do the job cheaply, with no risk to human operators, and while the Comanche would have had capabilities that no UAV could match... it would also have been a hell of a lot more expensive, more difficult to deploy, and subject to the possibility of getting shot down and losing servicemen as a result.
So the program was canceled, though as with the Crusader, I remember the costs being in the neighborhood of $7-8 billion, not $40 billion.
I suspect your talking head was referring to what the programs might have cost in the long run, in terms of acquisition.
Ultimately, the issue with both systems was that the bar was set too high, and rather than adjust the bar, the government allowed the programs to continue until they ultimately actually managed to meet that bar. The Crusader and the Comanche were both extremely impressive weapon systems; they simply took too long to develop.
Now, you could respond at this point that the corporations in charge of development dragged it out, milked the government for money, and to an extent that could be true. But it's also true that they were trying to meet the requirements set by the government, and that the corporation stands to make far less money if a development program is canceled, rather than one that actually goes into production.
In short, deliberately fucking around in development does not make the company money in even the medium-term, let along the long-term; it's unlikely that a profit-driven entity would intentionally fuck itself in that obvious a fashion.
Now.
The JLTV.
See, there's a certain level of irony attached to the JLTV. Because what it is, is a compromise vehicle; it's designed to meet two wildly-divergent sets of requirements. Arguably not just divergent, but to an extent mutually exclusive.
Basically, it's designed to function as a high-mobility scout/transport vehicle, and a mine-resistant armored patrol vehicle.
The Humvee was designed to fulfill the first function alone, and did a pretty good job of it. It was never intended to be used in the role it found itself occupying in the, well, occupation of Iraq.
There's a good reason for that, of course. MRAPs rely on hull shaping to deflect blasts that would otherwise destroy the vehicle (though there is a significant flaw in that theory, which I'll get to later). A V-shaped bottom hull means that the center of your vehicle must be raised to give adequate ground clearance; to accomplish this the center of gravity for the entire vehicle must be raised.
Remember the roll-over issue that SUVs were suffering? It's like that, compounded by the fact that these vehicles are much larger, and heavily armored to boot.
A high center of gravity is contraindicated for a high-mobility vehicle. You don't want it, ever. It fucks you over in just about every sense possible when it comes to rough terrain driving.
So.
The JLTV is trying to do both, and apparently it might actually succeed.
But why is it trying?
That's the real question that you should be asking about that program. Not the pricetag (which is actually quite reasonable, relatively speaking; most of the current generation of MRAPs runs over $400,000 each anyway), but why the Army feels it's necessary to develop something like the JLTV.
And the answer, of course, is that the Army is no more immune to bad press than the rest of us. When the Humvees began to see use as patrol vehicles in Iraq, a role they were never intended for and a role to which they were ill-suited, but a role which the Army had no other vehicle in the inventory to fill, a lot of troops died when they came under ambush, or under attack from IEDs. The Army needs a lot of trucks; there are over 160,000 Humvees in the inventory.
Compared to that, there are maybe 10,000 MRAPs in the US inventory.
So the JLTV is designed to cover both possibilities. It will be more expensive than the Humvee as a result; hopefully it will remain less expensive than the existing MRAPs we're currently procuring and deploying, while retaining a sufficient level of mobility to allow the Humvee to be retired to rear-echelon duties.
I am puzzled about his claim that the requirements were reduced; last I heard, the Army had actually increased the performance requirements for the hull against IEDs. Then again, given the general inaccuracy of most of what he was saying, I suppose I shouldn't be too surprised.
Incidentally, when I was talking about the MRAPs I mentioned that there was/is a major design flaw already extant and identified with the concept of the V-hull for deflecting explosions.
Specifically, it only works on explosions. On blast and fragmentation damage. Doesn't do nearly as well against an armor-piercing mine.
We're investing billions of dollars in a weapon system that I can see a competent terrorist overcoming in about 3 hours of design and machining time. (Take armor-piercing warhead off of RPG rocket. Dismount engine. Create housing for warhead, probably out of sufficiently large tin can. Craft either remote detonation capability, or other autonomous trigger mechanism. Invest in post-hole digger. Go to road. Dig post hole. Drop improvised mine into hole. Wait for patrol. Carnage ensues.)
Anyhoo.
A major part of the problem with the procurement system that exists today has relatively little to do with corporate greed, or bribery.
It has to do with governmental greed and bribery. But not the way you're thinking.
See, when a weapons system goes into production, someone has to build it. Which means that, somewhere in this great country of ours, jobs are going to be created, and tax money is going to be made.
Politicians, being what they are, are keen to have these jobs and taxes enter into their respective electorates; after all, they can then take credit for the jobs created, and the tax revenues generated.
They're bribing people all right. They're bribing their electorates.
So yes, you get nonsense like this deal with the alternate engine program for the F-35. And you get politicians lobbying to continue programs not out of any actual interest in the capabilities it might offer to the US military, but because it's produced in their home district and they like having more of their people fat and happy.
They have, in fact, been known to require less-efficient means of production in order to spread that wealth around before they allow a system to go into production.
So.
Speaking of people who don't educate themselves.
You are one of them.
the fact they barely work in the year (3 days out of the week, never working in the summer which only is due to before AC when Washington would get unbearably hot and humid in the summer since D.C. was built on a freaking swamp) is bullshit. And bullshit even more they spend 80% of their time (yes 80%) going around gathering money for their freaking campaigning. That's why I want campaign finance reform first and foremost. The government should be doing things, unpopular or not, that are for the best of the country for the long run (infrastructure building) and they prefer to go with what's going to get them re-elected. Kinda why I think we need, at least at the federal level, limited terms for ALL positions of the government (not just Presidential terms). Then they might actually do something in congress and the senate and we'd get more new people in. Making it harder to bribe so many people and keeping people who suck out. Sure we risk losing the good people, but oh well. There are more bad than good at this point anyways.