I've read sci-fi books that are more realistic than this. Only the wildest cyber-crime novels portray the military network systems and administration ops as competent. When watching "Alias" a long time ago, I had to laugh every time I saw an instantly responding laptop from sleep that basically took 1 second to show a login screen (of course they used Linux so it is actually possible, especially if they picked laptops with good compatibility).
And in light of Spectre/Meltdown and the complete hardware and software security circus that we've been witnessing for years (a new CVE in a popular software on a regular basis, anyone?), I also have my doubts that the military control their physical computer supply chain that well and from "trusted" vendors, but who knows. They love doing it, so that part maybe they got right. Doesn't change the fact that they have thousands of machines that are potentially back-doored on the hardware level, even below ring zero.
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Needless to say I completely agree with the article. Like 1h to just log-in, WTF?! And another 20 minutes to just send an email?!
I have a laptop with a Celeron J4155 CPU and 12GB RAM and a SATA III SSD that starts Manjaro + XFCE in 10-12 seconds. A browser and mail client are fully started and ready to use another 10-15 seconds later. The machine doesn't lag on any of the casual tasks that I do on it, unless I play a 4K YouTube video.
It costed me exactly $170 on the second-hand market, and has a very acceptable 3000x2000 display as well. Maybe the military should look into those laptops.