If you go to the Counter Terrorism Expo in London, you can see this. Dozens of organisations selling effectively the same stuff.
Much of which is actually pure crap from a security/defence standpoint. How do they actually manage to sell it? Connections...hiring people who previously where in side the military/intelligence/Defence Departments etc. The same process as in the US no doubt. The worse thing is that some of the stuff is both expensive, useless and occasionally dangerous for the people who require it.
BAE Systems is the perfect example of this. They are effectively a hidden British government job scheme. They make crap equipment, overly costly and rarely on time. There are many cases where UK tax payer would actually save money by firing the people in the jobs, giving them golden payoffs and buying more effective equipment elsewhere. Meanwhile their troops would be safer. For example the SA80, Westland Apache helicopters costing 50% more than their US-made Longbow equivalents - the list is endless.
I highly recommend the book "Lions, Donkeys And Dinosaurs: Waste and Blundering in the Military" for a quick overview of that.
There is inherent value in simply having an existing capable defense contractor in your own nation. It isn't about dollars and cents, it's about being capable of fighting a war without outside help (or not being wholly dependent). So you throw money at the local defense contractor to keep it alive. It's expensive to do this, but if you don't you pay for it in other ways because if you buy all of your equipment from foreign defense contractors they can use that as political leverage against you.
A lot of money is spent being prepared for wars that won't happen _because_ everyone is prepared for them.
The industrial world by now is too globalized for this sort of approach to work. We keep pretending otherwise so that money keeps flowing and the general public doesn't freak out, but I bet even the almighty US cannot certify that most of their tech is built at home.
If there's ever a global conflict where the scope and scale disrupts those global supply lines, it will go nuclear and not matter anymore.
When U.S. military equipment is considered a bargain... you're in deep doo-doo
In the USA, education spending is mostly funneled to cronies. Our elections are well towards being privatized. We blew billions on unnecessary new gear that never worked well and is now landfill. Roads and misc infrastructure is often substandard and overbudget. Etc, etc.
I don't know what the fix is. Maybe more sunshine (transparency, accountability). Like Steve Ballmer's new purpose in life.
The UK learned their lesson on that approach decades ago:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nassau_Agreement#Skybolt_Crisi...
This is the key takeaway from the article. Most of the expense isn't making anyone safer, and the advantage is held by the aggressor who only has to be successful once to inflict unpalatable physical, economic and political damage to defending developed nations.
> The question is whether that funding truly advances the cause of the European citizen, or only that of the industry.
The parallels to the drug industry are striking, where often the most expensive drug is the least effective and billions are spent on duplicative competitive approaches.
> Let brilliant scientists get down to work, and leave them alone for five years
It is interesting the advances smaller, less well funded countries, have made in defense spending. Swedish Gotland subs, Israeli Iron Dome missile defense, Norwegian anti-air missles, reputed North Korean advances in EMP weapons, and reputed Iranian advances in fast torpedos, etc.
Sometimes less means more.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADE_651 http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-29459896
http://www.geek.com/apps/tsa-paid-1-4-million-for-randomizer...
Good.
