Why does everybody assume the US military is capable of just about anything?
I don't think their technology has approached anything like science fiction levels. For one, they use a lowest cost contractor model. For another, they make very shortsighted long term capital decisions based on funding whims.
If you zoom out, they shoot bits of metal at people using gunpowder for the most part. That tech has been around for hundreds of years.
They blow stuff up with chemicals. That bit has been around for hundreds of years, too. Their planes run on gas, their cars run on gas, just like everybody else's do.
The newest tech they have seems to be nukes and non fly by wire aircraft. Which is pretty cool... but not science fiction.
If you want to look at their high tech, look at the X37B. Pretty cool, but at the end of the day it's just a small remotely operated shuttle. Basic control surfaces, and all it does is what the shuttle did: it's basically a short haul truck.
They don't have frickin' sharks with frickin' laser beams. They don't have troops deployed with jetpacks, they don't have troops deployed with powered armour, they don't appear to have a working quantum computer... and if they did, they probably wouldn't know what to do with it.
They leak their best minds to the private sector from what I hear, as well.
Government agencies are notorious for being backward, slow, bureaucratic, and cheap. Hell, even they buy their iPhones from apple like the rest of us and think they are fancy.
Why do people look at them in awe? It seems if there were some kind of disinformation campaign, it's about their advanced capability that is the lie.