Well actually, I ran into my old NCO the other day (a great guy who actually did get things done).  A lot of the civilians that I had known were still in the same place and apparently not that much had changed in that neck of the woods.  Admittedly, it was a pretty protected administration which was never going to be on the forefront of spending cuts. I concede your broader point : overall the military has become more efficient than 15 yrs ago having, among others, lost access to freeish labour.

Nevertheless, in my initial post, I dwelt on the labor cost aspect to keep it short but procurement, mandated hardware and software requirements (as Alex mentions), were also quite wasteful. Overall I'm confident that there's still a lot of room for cost reduction.