The easiest answer is probably public financing of elections.
Because Members of Congress basically need to continuously raise money, there’s always an incentive to spread the wealth among congressional districts.
For the F35, I can think of one company in a rural area who fabricates some metal component for the project. Because of the way it is contracted, acceptance standards, etc they sell it for something like 50x it’s value of you were to order it, and whomever gets the part spends even more to receive it.
Planes are small and have lots of parts, so they suffer more from these issues. We’re still ok at building warships, because you can’t build a shipyard in some coal town in Kentucky.
Public financing would help as a component with corporate lobbyists but pork barrels wouldn't be affected. I use the term with a slight distinction - pork barrels are for parochial voter influnce while an "industrial complex" involves a company's interest in exchange for political benefits. The two may overlap if what helps the company also gets votes in itself. A stereotypical but perhaps unfair example of both (as I am uncertain of actual lobbying in the period) would be Detroit in its heyday - it would have a sizeable base of factory workers locally and large connected auto companies.
The problem of pork barrels is that it gets them votes directly by making things worse for everybody else in exchange for local benefits. Disproportionate representation is what enables it as a tactic or at least makes it more disastrous. Something which serves the interests of 30% of the population is closer to benefitting the whole than one for 3% of the population.
I would agree that it isn't magic. Keep in mind that one man's pork is another's bacon. Pork is part of the political process.
In the modern environment, material pork barrel spending is at the corporate/national level. Most congressional districts due to gerrymandering or demographics are very secure... the era of political machines handing out turkeys is gone.
If the craven corruption around defense contracting was only 80% as wasteful as it is today, you could give every member of congress a substantial slush fund to waste and still save money. Plus you would have working fighter jets that are able to compete with countries like Russia, that has a GDP equivalent to Texas but seems to be able to procure weapons.
Because Members of Congress basically need to continuously raise money, there’s always an incentive to spread the wealth among congressional districts.
For the F35, I can think of one company in a rural area who fabricates some metal component for the project. Because of the way it is contracted, acceptance standards, etc they sell it for something like 50x it’s value of you were to order it, and whomever gets the part spends even more to receive it.
Planes are small and have lots of parts, so they suffer more from these issues. We’re still ok at building warships, because you can’t build a shipyard in some coal town in Kentucky.