I think that is precisely the dynamic. The oligarchs basically found a socially acceptable way to funnel taxes back into their pockets instead of productive purposes they're meant for. It's a great trick since you can always find ways to scare people into funding the military, and these policies tend to have fairly broad support.

Meanwhile, it's not even clearly whom our military plans to fight exactly. We're certainly not going to take on the US, especially given that most of our weapons are produced there. We're not going to take on Russia either. Our best bet for protection would be to create deeper ties with China which could act as a balance to the US. Also, as we now see in Iran, the kind of military we are building is completely outdated. Modern military would rely on cheap drones and missiles as a primary form of defense.