It’s not about make-work. It’s about the intersection of what the military says it needs, what congress folks can get away with, and what contractors lobby for to “maintain the industrial base”.

Building parks & hospitals doesn’t contribute to national defense, and it doesn’t develop or maintain the skills of welders who can join absurdly thick plates in the hull of a ship, or folks who can work with composites and thin aluminum, etc.

I’m not arguing that the system is working or that we have the right balance. But it’s not a simple “don’t build bombs, build hospitals” dichotomy.