The depth of FAR is because people get very concerned when money is stolen and just as concerned when a project doesn't pan out. They complain that public money should be unerringly spent on only exact and narrow problems and fail to notice that in no other field of endeavor is that anywhere close to being true. It gets worse in peace time because everyone has some ideas about threats. Some feel like there is no threat because there is no war and others want to brace against a foe that has infinite resources backed by diabolical geniuses. The latter leads to such as our side building to stop an army that Russia never had as a stop-gap momentary slow-down to an all-out thermonuclear exchange. So we have the F-35 and the stealth fighter and bomber to attack a country that keeps getting hit by the equivalent of a Cessna 172 with some dynamite as cargo. I won't disapprove of the advanced fighters against that sort of paper defense which mean that the pilots are coming home, but there is a cost to that level of performance.
In spite of this it is still possible to bring a bulk carrier sized vessel alongside one of the most costly ships to ever be constructed and ram into it (and vice versa) and what if that bulk carrier was filled with TNT and a detonator? The carrier would have evaporated.
People are just terrible at making predictions when little is going on. Ukraine has rapid development of drones because they can see what the threat is and that threat is waves of meat, mainly on foot or riding golf-carts, with a few weakly armored vehicles. The Ukranians can readily adapt because they can see what works and what fails to work. They can create inexpensive solutions because the problems are pinpoint in extent. Like when the bouncing bomb was developed in WWII - it didn't solve any but a single problem - a dam.
In peacetime everyone wants the most for their money and instead of the uneconomical solution of building 5,000 different lines of aircraft, each tailored to a single mission, they try to cram solutions to every imaginable problem into one or two; the price goes up and the demand to cover one more facet of warfare increases each time.
For example, in a war with Russia, is it better to have an air superiority fighter to meet their best pilots in aerial duels or to have a large number of low-observable, kamikaze drones that obliterate the fuel dumps required to operate those Russian jets? I expect the drones are far less expensive to end that air war, but it's not going to be popular as a DoD contract.
There is a tendency to put a lot of eggs into a basket and then up-armor the basket. And then not use the eggs because the eggs are too expensive.
The economics are tougher. The US spends a lot on the military and it is easy to think that money somehow evaporates. But look at the parking lots around defense contractor facilities. That money isn't just buying military equipment, it's buying cars, houses, shopping centers, fire stations, groceries, hospitals, and all of those create jobs for other people. It's a huge economic pump that keeps a bunch of smart people occupied and out of trouble in a society that has decreasing use for that talent and it provides for a huge number outside of the initial footprint.
I may be biased, but this country doesn't like to spend money on infrastructure which is one place to absorb engineers, and it has incentivized moving manufacturing off shore by bad taxation policies; defense is one of the few that demand US-made items; where would the defense engineers go? I knew a few retired to sell real estate.
Other nations, as part of their industrialization, have spent a lot on educating their engineers and building their production capacity while the US has spent a lot on getting the majority of wealth into as few hands as possible.
In part, being involved in stupid little wars is a benefit; it gives the chance to see what works and what doesn't. MRAPS didn't appear before dealing with insurgents. The trick is to do so, for the USA, is to do so without getting Americans crippled or killed.
What we send to Ukraine is worth every dime and we should send more. But, instead of setting up to mass manufacture cheap FPV drones, the US is taking the wrong lesson and, political stupidity aside, hasn't set up the raw manufacturing capacity to build the components necessary to even build suitable drones. I expect the majority of electronics and the rare-earth magnets come from China. Even the FAA is working to undercut the development of civilian interest in hobby drones, decreasing the available pilots in case of a real crunch and the vibrant problem solving necessary for adapting to conditions.
Overall, my level of worry is not too high. The last time a few Navy ships got sunk America responded with an atomic bomb. Whatever suck there is in preparing, the US makes up for by spending money on revenge. But what the USA won't have is a force sufficient to stop attackers by the threat of US intervention because we are dialed in to fight wars that won't happen.