You underestimate the military-industrial complex. All you need to drive appropriations is some form of fear. Iran or China or "terrorists" will do fine.
In some cases unsophisticated opponents are better. If eggheads argue your expensive missile-defense shield won't work, you can argue that it will against crappy missiles launched by Iran.
One the one hand, you're right in that the spending never really dips below $250 billion, except from 1945-1950. On the other hand, defense spending has doubled in recent years, and there is noticeable growth historically whenever we actually used our military.
War isn't necessary for the military-industrial complex to get rich, but it helps. I don't think the logistical complications of war are a very meaningful deterrence for the people who stand to profit from it.
Defense spending has increased (not really doubled, though, according to those numbers), but much of that increase was poured down the drain actually making the war happen. Defense contractors' profits probably don't scale linearly with defense spending in times of war.
At the bottom it says that these figures don't include the costs for the day-to-day expenses of Iraq or Afghanistan. Those costs, if my cursory Google search is to be believed, are around $9 billion a month. All told, that's about $600 billion a year, or twice the "peacetime" average of $300 billion.
War profiteering blows away peacetime defense systems. The post 2001 defense spending boom has dwarfed the cold war at minting billionaires. Vietnam also produced stupendous profits that were not matched by the 80s spending surge.
The post 2001 defense spending boom has dwarfed the cold war at minting billionaires.
Really? I haven't heard of that many people becoming billionaires off the defense industry, given that it's dominated by giant decades-old conglomerates. But then again, maybe I haven't been paying attention. Got some names for me?
Most are probably not direct profiteers, like CEOs, they're mainly shareholders. But I'm sitting at Bethesda Naval Hospital right now, a nearly empty hospital with entirely too many staff, watching billion dollar buildings be built for patients that will never come (thanks to the admittedly much more humane TriCare system that allows retirees and dependents to be treated in their hometown civilian facilities). I have spent the last month learning about the desperately failed suite of electronic medical record apps that DoD has paid Lockheed Martin $20 billion dollars to develop (they fail on so many levels I don't know where to begin, just search for AHLTA).
Relevance to your question: providing supporting evidence. Citing two specific examples of DoD spending that appear to out of proportion to either need or benefit, but which sent billions to the conglomerates you mention. Both examples based on personal experience.
Hahaha, this is so true. Contractors owned by minorities get preferential treatment on bids, so there are tons of tiny minority-owned subcontracting companies which happen to be owned by larger conglomerates. I personally know some folks here in St. Louis (there is a lot of defense contracting here) who work for such companies.
In some cases unsophisticated opponents are better. If eggheads argue your expensive missile-defense shield won't work, you can argue that it will against crappy missiles launched by Iran.