The frogs need welfare, not fighters. I would guess 20% of the cost of the jet is completely wasted. I may be too generous.
” I would guess 20% of the cost of the jet is completely wasted”
I spent 30 years on the contractor side of military spending. The some of the largest costs were due to non hardware items added to the hardware cost. For example, the contracts always had social agenda items like buying only from “green” sources, not using cadmium or chromium, or companies who even used those elements on items you were not buying from them (FCS contract). Let’s not even talk about the racial and equality quotas which make you hire people and put the on the contract so they can pretend to contribute. When I worked for Schlumberger’s (French company) military arm they had similar costs built into their hardware making it cost much more than if you were only paying for the machining, components, testing and software. Military spending is all about political leaders sending money to their favorite groups.
One of the boxes I was worked on for an American company, which it sold to the Army, as no bigger than several cigarette packs and contained a few resistors, a relay and a light bulb. You could have assembled it in your garage for under two hundred dollars. It cost $45,000.