You have to understand how procurement works. A friend of mine in the Marines at the time that came out (1980s) explained it to me.

You have a toolkit. The contractor had to make that toolkit to very specific government requirements. Especially for things in the military, you can't just go "off the shelf". That hammer? That $600 toilet seat? They have to survive nuclear fallout, among other things. They have to have very precise measurements, etc.

Now, that hammer? It's part of the toolkit. The only way the contractor can put things out at a lowest-cost pric is to make it as a unit. You can't get just the hammer, you have to buy the whole toolkit, so you spend the money on the whole toolkit to get the hammer - hence the "hammer is $1400" stories come out.

Now I'm on a contract for the Air Force. Now I see how these contracts work. Lots of overhead, very expensive.

It's like Amtrak. They wanted to introduce high-speed rail betwen Boston, New York, Philly, Baltimore and D.C. They leased trains from a few European manufacturers to test things out (the German ICE, the Swedish X-2000, the Talgo, etc). They all performed well. So what did we do? Did we buy "off the shelf" technology?

No. We custom-designed the Acela, made mistakes in the design, changed the design during manufacturing and blamed Bombardier and Alstom for it. All of this made it far more expensive than buying a TGV or an X-2000 or an ICE. ...and it didn't work right in some cases (can't tilt as much in certian areas because they mismeasured certain clearances).

That's how it works.