axioms...

My point was that your comment alluded only to the DoD reactions (wrong though they be). While "...getting Federal funds flowing to the constituents of our elected representatives, especially to those who make big campaign contributions, was the underlying source of enpowerment to the various parts of the Executive Branch (like the various Military Services)" may be intuitively obvious to the casual observer, the fact that Congress drives that and effectively forces DoD and others to play their game needs to be trumpeted loudly at every opportunity else the corrupt, flawed and inefficient system will not change...

No, I don't wonder why ship procurement is five year money and aircraft procurement is three year money and most other procurement is one or two year money. I know why -- and that, too, needs to be stopped. Those turkeys use the Constitution when it suits, regularly defeat efforts to put the Federal government under GAAP and use the convoluted budget process to buy votes while totally obscuring the tricks they play on the electorate.

Agree on the TTP and also on the self image bit. Pity that Gordy's campaign wasn't more effective. That it was not is partly the Army's fault but more the fault of Congress and the way they do business. Lot of SASC and HASC staffers have pet rocks...

Diffrentiated Persians versus undiffrentiated Persians...

...Same is true for the Egyptians--the last Pharoah was supplanted about the time of Julius Caesar, whose realm was analogous to the America of Teddy Roosevelt, I think."
We can disagree on that.

"...My hunch is that bigness vs. smallness (of individual weapons systems and/or spending categories) is probably a red herring, political-economy-wise. Total levels of spending, and historical patterns of spending, though, are real considerations here, I think."
You are correct in the political economy sense but very wrong in the political and practical senses. It isn't a red herring, it drives the train and it is wasteful, inefficient, ineffective all too often, unresponsive to true military needs. Far more importantly, it is a very significant contributor to that total level of spending..