The loose definition of what encompasses "defense" is the very reason it is so easily exploited by those seeking profit.
http://security.blogs.cnn.com/2012/10/09/army-to-congress-thanks-but-no-tanks/comment-page-4/
I realize there are 2 ways of looking at this but it would be far more financially viable to have retooled this factory 5-10yrs ago into producing something actually needed instead of building 1000's of extras to sit and rust that then need more $ to refurbish. This company is not interested in "jobs", its motive is to maintain the cash cow they milk for profit. Its just excessive waste of tax payers $ for corporate profits that is made up to appear like its to help the working base.
If unsustainable jobs are maintained at the tax payers expense repeatedly, the system becomes dependent on hand outs and it looses ALL ability to be competitive. When to much of the economy falls into this protectionism, the whole economy gets dragged down.
There needs to be a clearly established point where a line is drawn. Help is given for the company to transition and become competitive again and if it can't then capitalism mandates that the weak (Companies/corporations) must die and allow new growth to spring up in its place.
Only when this happens naturally will there be an appropriate feed back mechanism to politics that will in turn ensure business must maintain US based competitive business models - not just PROFIT models. As it is, corporations have lobbied politicians to make it more profitable to move their facilities offshore for the most part and that's exactly what they do.
We can't fix the sickness by allowing even more sickness. It only will ever lead to a ever decreasing US capacity. In turn, less good paying jobs, which results in even less consumption. Then to stay competitive, manufacturing costs must be decreased by moving more jobs offshore.
This game of short term profits results in its own consumption bases demise eventually.
