Don't get me wrong. I respect your knowledge and understanding of the Navy system and how we arrived at this point. Its good.
Competition doesn't solve the multitude of issues, but it's a necessary and essential building block to fixing the system. Handing out $B in non-competed contracts is bad in just about every aspect, and the trend in DoD just in the past 3 years is staggering. I guess the capstone, in my opinion, was VXX because of the visibility, the desire for an OTS product, and DoD Leadership's constant rhetoric about "better buying power", competition, and even Congress lauding WSARA as a fix. Only to have the Services ignore all of it and do the easier thing.
If we don't fix the system and hold people accountable for failures like VH-71(I don't recall hearing anybody other than Industry losing their jobs over a $3.5B failure), we will suffer the same fate as the former USSR, eventually, when it comes to equipping our military. OUR economy cannot support that kind of extreme inefficiency, and we are just now starting to see the symptoms.