How is Raytheon going to make money off the Apache that didn't return yesterday? I can't even begin to imagine that connection.

Didn't you hear? Centcom sent in a guided munition to destroy it.

But I hope that you're right. I hope they used a $30k JDAM rather than a $2.5M Tomahawk. My taxpayer dollars are at stake too.

A lot of that money is spent on supplies that most people don't consider. Stuff like fuel (last figure I saw said the M1 got something like 5 gallons / mile - we have a lot of vehicles burning a LOT of fuel), food, hazard pay, medical supplies, water.

You know where most of that money is going to go? Services. Everything from lawyers to porta-potties. The military contracts people to come in and set stuff up, even for tent cities. It isn't for weapons. Its for support. Do general contractors count as military industry in this instance? When I hear the terms military industry or defense contractors, I (and I'm willing to bet most people) think of the Lockheed Martins, Northrop Grummans and Boeings.

True, much of that sum will go on 'stuff' other than weapons or munitions. But my take on it is simply this. In order to maintain MTW readiness, weapons and munitions available at the start of a war need to be available as soon as possible after the end of the war. Otherwise, there was either an oversupply to begin with, or MTW readiness has been affected. I find it hard to believe that after a decade of post-cold-war defence spending cuts that there was a huge oversupply of munitions such that this war could be fought from surplus. How many tomahawks have been fired so far?

I'd also hazard a guess that by appropriating a 'cost-of-war' budget from Congress it is much easier for the Pentagon to procure replacement munitions and weapons, than it would be if they didn't make the appropriation and then tried to replace them through next years discretionary spending budget. The Pentagon would be crazy *not* to do that. I think it's fair to expect that Boeing (as the largest military contractor, ~20%, IIRC) will see a nice chunk of money from this $72.5B coming their way over the next few years.

As an aside, I watched an interesting news clip the other day. I can't remember which network, but they were discussing MREs and in the process went to one of the factories the produces them. The manager they interviewed couldn't quite keep the sparkle out of his eyes when discussing the current war.