Still not getting anywhere. Does a degree w/ little to no experience mean more than years of experience?

I've applied to several jobs only to not get anything back or a few "we went another direction" type response. Here's the skinny:

I'm a 9 year vet that was able to get hired before even starting my separation leave and for that I'm grateful. I'm an inspector under contract for an army base. All I do is inspect, create a report based on what I found, brief the person in charge of what I found and what he/she can do to fix it and move on to the next organization. I'm part of a 5 person team that has a "team lead" who (as far as I can tell) just go to meetings once a week (I'm positive there's more to it, but that's just my observation). So there's really no moving up unless the lead leaves. The other 4 (including me) all have the same title so there's no real "seniority" as far as the company is concerned but we establish once amongst ourselves. I've been on this job for over 6 years now and it's the same thing day in and day out. As a contractor, I can't issue violations/fines or give these people the knife hand and say "you HAVE to do blah."

Now the job isn't bad at all. It's up to me how long the inspection takes, my lead doesn't lean over my shoulder ever minute of the day making sure work is getting done, I have a 3 day weekend every other week and the pay is decent. It's just...the job is stagnant and I feel I'm worth more than what I'm getting paid now.

I don't have a degree of any kind, but I have 9 years of military experience ranging from safety, administration, medical response, HAZMAT, and I dab in computer languages now as a self taught hobby of sorts, basic mechanic type skills too.

So after some researching, it turns out that jobs in the private sector pays more than what I'm making, like $10k/yr more. I've created different variations of my resume and cover letters and I'm getting squat, nada, zilch.

Thus far the only thing I can think of is my lack of a degree is hurting me but that thought just kind of chaps my ass because I would think that years of experience would trump a kid with a masters degree but no experience. My team has a member who does have a masters degree in our field but no experience other than his time with us for the past 1.5 maybe 2 years, and he still makes the dumbest mistakes on his reports (I review my teams' reports) which are pre-done for the team, just few minor changes to reflect the name of the organization he inspected, their score and paragraph of what they got wrong.

Is it really that important to have a degree?

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Sorry for seeming like I vented, apologize for that.

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