Tucumseh
You are right, it is difficult to accuse those at the implementation level ie mid management levels of screwing up massively. As much as I like a good harrumph at Civil Servants & MoD etc, there are probably very few of them that wake up in the mornings and go to work with the intention of doing a bad job.
The people that really need the kick in the bollocks are the senior policy stream - our so-called high flyers and the Machieavellian Sir Humphry types with their own personal agendas and power games (oh and the contract writers who are just plain incompetent). But I would reserve the biggest kick in the bollocks for the politicians who 'direct' and I use that word in its loosest sense, our defence policy.