Well, "Grifter" is defined as "a person who engages in petty or small-scale swindling."
The Littoral Combat Ships (LCS) cost about $500 Million a piece to build, there are going to be 23 of them, and each will cost about $70 Million annually to maintain. So, I don't think that's "small scale" and I would say that the Honorable Matt Gaetz is being very generous when he refers to them as "grifters."
We have more general and flag officers in the U.S. military today than we did at the height of WW2. We have more civilian bureaucracy at DOD than we had during WW2 in the Dept. of War and the Dept. of the Navy combined. Combine that with the fact that Congressional appropriations are not made to DOD without the assurances that such federal funds will reach every single congressional district through DFAR contracts to large corporations, small business (i.e. those special donors), and universities alike added to the fact that DOD has NEVER successfully passed a financial audit and you've got a recipe for incredible fraud, waste, and abuse.
If I had it my way, I'd place Erik Prince as Secretary of Defense and I feel confident he would do a lot in four to eight years to at least set DOD on a path to sanity. We cannot keep placing as Secretary of Defense retired general or flag officers, because they are part of the problem.