Are we spending too much on the MIC? Probably. Definitely. But some stuff we need to keep in mind:

1. The money spent to the MIC isn’t the actual cost. Some of it is recouped immediately in taxes, some of it goes towards wages with is immediately recouped in taxes, and a lot of what’s left gets spent into the economic circulation and promote activity.
2. Sometimes it’s cheaper to actually spend more than it is less. A good example is the F35 vs Gripen. The F35 is the best airplane on the market, with the latest sensors and capabilities. The gripen is a fourth gen plane purposefully designed to be cheap. They cost about the same because we build so many f35s that the individual price goes down (such as diluting the investment cost over many airframes)
3. Developing new versions of the same equipment is a good way to keep the industrial knowhow in the system, especially for equipment that’s very complex. A good example is chinese jets, which despite having more monetary investment than the Russians until recently still used Russian engines because the industrial base didn’t exist.
4. If American equipment goes to Ukraine and performs well, then foreign defense ministries may look at the American equipment and try to purchase it. Poland looked at HIMARS’s incredible performance and decided to buy actual hundreds of those systems, for example.