Subscription model defence

I have come across an article stating that SpaceX is the frontrunner in the race to build Trump's "Golden Dome" missile defence system.  Since defence against intercontinental ballistic missiles is an incredibly complicated task (and getting more complicated with all the extra garbage we are throwing into low-earth-orbit all the time), and the technology is still unreliable even in the forty years since "Star Wars" was first proposed, I wouldn't have been interested in the report, other than as yet another example of an expensive plan that'll go nowhere.  (Yes, yes, I get it.  "Golden" is better than "iron."  But that still doesn't actually mean you can get it to work, particularly since you can't actually test it until the first time that someone actually lobs a nuclear warhead at you.)

Except for the mention of the "subscription model."

How do you build a national defence system on a "subscription model"?

Well, apparently, the government pays for, but doesn't actually *own*, the defence system.  The contractor owns the defence system.

So my mind immediately goes to all kinds of jokes about how this is the most cost-effective way to wage war and mass killing ever invented, and wondering how much of a damage deposit you have to pay when you are renting a tank, or a nuclear submarine (and how you determine, for sure, that the submarine actually sank, rather than just being stolen by those renting it).

Except that the jokes aren't really all that funny when I also know that *WAY* too many people will actually think that this is a good and workable idea.  Particularly Musk, Thiel, and all too many of the tech bro billionaires who *also* believe that the time of governments and countries is over, and that corporations should take over governance of the lives of everyone on earth.

And getting the governments to pay you for building the means of national defence, and law enforcement, and pretty much everything else that governments are supposed to do, on a "subscription model," which means that you then actually own them all, would be a pretty good way to do that.