Simple sound business principles…..a crude analogy in business is “just-in-time” stock replenishment….means you free up working capital and funds for other activities….that’s why shops keep just enough stock in hand….wait for cash flow in from earlier sales to better spend what funds are to hand (or in this case: what national defence budget is available in the year).

…..only people who would want unfettered expenditure, even in straitened times, are shareholders of defence companies…..a good example of unchecked and unnecessary expenditure is the massive expansion during the Reagan years when even world War II battleships were re-activated at great cost (huge expensive manpower required as well) only to be de-activated after a relatively short time at great cost that could be better spent elsewhere.

Winners? People who owned stock in defence companies….never underestimate simple human greed for money as a prime driver of where a nation’s budget goes…..if you throw enough money at any weapon system, including stealth and generation-6 or whatever-number-I-say differentiates-my-system and even the F-35 (!) , you can make it work! …..followed of course by the usual iterations of countermeasures by the other side.

Hopsalot, you said you don’t get why people think highly of Gripen NG and are puzzled why people question the need to spend money on say the F-35 when the only country that needs “day one” offensive weapon systems is the good old US of A….most of the smaller nations could get by for their “normal” mission needs with say Gripen NG at a fraction of the cost.

….if they want to join in on the coat tails of America to “regime-change” another country that I contend will become increasingly more difficult to do and it will be more difficult to take public opinion with you due to it being more difficult to pull the wool over people’s eyes with so much information available to the public instead of just a small elite or political class.

….forget Iraq I just found out after 1914 cabinet papers were released after the 100 year rule that the foreign secretary Grey simply didn’t tell the Prime Minister Asquith for three years of a policy and plans to ship over a British Expeditionary Force to assist the French under the Entente Cordiale….these secret provisions and agreements some suggest, amongst other factors, led to a chain of events with a involuntary momentum of their own, to the First World War I…..secret addendums to treaties are more difficult to keep secret in these open and transparent times….that’s what we’re fighting for isn’t it?