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You seem to have a real, personal vendetta against the MITRE Corporation. I worked with a few of them back in the 1980's. Not particularly useful, some of the were. And yes, I agree - vastly overpaid on that contract. They were sort of "Uber-Contractors" in that they thought of themselves as contractors, but better than DoD civilians.

Cut them some? Sure. Why not. But Sequestration is an across-the-board meat ax that cuts into (primarily) O&M funds for the military.

Guess what? During this go-around of Sequestration (and we get to look forward to 10 years of this mess), the contractors make out much, much better than the military and DoD civilians. The DoD civilians will get furloughed, the contractors will fare much, much better.

We do need airbases in Europe. Yes, it is expensive. We spend $3B a day on liberal garbage in this country. For the strategic advantage and operational capability they provide this nation during crisis and wartime, that is worth every penny. I am sorry you don't feel this way, but it is the truth.

MITRE is just an example which I use based on my experience, not a vendetta. I have a bit of experience with a couple of the national labs and they are a little better but have much of the same problem which is essentially grabbing for as many defense dollars as possible without ever honestly self-evaluation (never mind external) whether they can actually accomplish the work. My own employer is guilty as well. I am myself guilty of writing proposals for which I could not perform the work (even though I thought I could). Fortunately I have a colleague who is the gatekeeper on that now.

The broader point is that the defense industry is a pork-filled mess and needs the meat ax, not a little tweaking. It's too bad if, as you say, contractors will not get cut under sequestration. They need to be cut.

My experience with DoD civilians is that they are very inefficient, not because they want to be, but because they are mired in the bureaucracy. Telework is a joke and real work often only takes place a day or two a week. Often they will simply twiddle their thumbs for a week or two while someone higher up holds up the work for some stupid reason. My experience with active military is limited. The worst of the worst in my experience are various groups whose only job is paperwork and they can't turn around a document in less than a month or sometimes many months. Those groups are on bases in various parts of the country that are politically protected.

The biggest picture is that the military could easily meet its mission on 1/2 or less of the current budget, but it's not possible due to a million feifdoms and politically-motivated interest groups. It's a mess. If I had a choice I would fire everyone and start over.