I have no love for the military. I turned down a guaranteed job offer that pays twice what I'm currently making simply because I don't want to work on things that kill people.

That said, I can also see the other side of this. According to Wikipedia, the US government spent $66 billion dollars on the F22. I'm naive, so I think that we could save $66 billion on that by just not having an F22, but congress disagrees with me and I'm not sure that I'll ever win that fight. However, imagine that start-ups could do the job 10% more efficiently. That's six billion dollars that you just saved.

Now, imagine an entire government agency, like the Peace Corp, but purely dedicated to fighting human trafficking. You could fund that agency for fifteen years on that six billion dollars. If the startup is 20% cheaper, then you could have a second agency of similar size that is dedicated to helping people stop smoking. If the startup managed to be a full 30% cheaper, you can throw in thirty thousand four-year, full-ride college scholarships.

Again, I'd love to have all of that $66 billion spent on other projects, but even funnelling part of that into a different area could markedly improve the world. I'd never work for a start-up that worked on air combat, but I'd be thrilled to free up some of the air combat budget.

The F-22 at least more or less accomplished what the program set out to do. It's hilarious to compare it to its "replacement", the F-35, a plane that attempts to shoehorn three mutually conflicting roles into one airframe to reduce costs, except it's going to cost something like a trillion dollars. The best (worst) one is the jumpjet version, designed to operate from temporary airfields and catapult-less aircraft carriers, except it melts anything it tries to land on [1], the fuel trucks that service it need to be painted white to keep the fuel cool enough so the plane doesn't fall out of the sky [2], and it can't even carry the bombs it was designed to carry [3]. At least, it's not alone in that problem though, the F-35A can't shoot its (pointless) gun [4].

[1] http://aviationweek.com/defense/opinion-f-35b-vertical-landi...

[2] http://www.af.mil/News/ArticleDisplay/tabid/223/Article/5555...

[3] http://www.defenseworld.net/news/12313/F_35B__Incapable__Of_...

[4] http://rt.com/usa/219255-f35-fighter-jet-glitch/

I can see how we'd be better off without human trafficking and, to a smaller extent, without the tobacco business. I'm not sure we'd be better off without weapons. In fact, if the club became world's most advanced weapon tomorrow, it would, among other things, likely boost human trafficking.

We cannot be without weapons. Ever. A smart person could weaponize everything. That is the whole point of the brain evolving. It is in our DNA.

There already are companies trying to disrupt the combat aircraft industry: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Textron_AirLand_Scorpion

There are, of course, defense startups. This one is pretty futuristic/terrifying: http://www.proxdynamics.com/home