I don't think the MIC is that lucrative even in the US, compared to the private sector. Consider the F35 - there have been like 1500 planes, and at $100mm a piece, the total comes out to $150B over two decades, and that's revenue, I doubt they have a huge margin on that, compared to software, where the costs are minimal.

Despite there being a war on, LM stocks have performed close to the market. Boeing has repeatedly reported that its commercial division is doing much better than its defense one, and Boeing isn't doing so hot these days.

I remember reading that Boeing's commercial division

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judahmeek 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> I remember reading that Boeing's commercial division

This sentence appears to be unfinished.

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dyauspitr 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

It’s lucrative to companies that see the ridiculous waste the current military industrial complex is. There can be competitors that can provide similar effectiveness for a fraction of the cost.

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torginus 8 hours ago | parent [-]

I don't want to judge the US armed forces, so the following is a hypothetical - I heard the rumor that some procurement guy shared the US Army paid about $10k for a set of power tools for mechanics, which were commercially available, and together cost about $1k.

Now I learned from ChatGPT that the US Army has about 100k mechanics, and assuming every one gets such a set, and the extra $9k is pure profit, then the guy making the sale gets about $900mm out of it - a staggering amount, but not commercially compared to what big companies rake in, and financially not very sophisticated.

Also I'd like to stress that the above scenario is conjecture - I have far too little knowledge of the actual specifics of the org to just make such an accusation openly.

	▲	Eisenstein an hour ago \| parent [-]
		$1k for the tools, $5k for dealing with the paperwork, $2k for having to stock 4,000 sets for years because they need to have direct replacements forever in order to make them standard issue, $500 for needing a different version for the army, navy, air force, and coast guard, and $500 profit.