“The US air force spent $90,000 for a small bag of bushings. Iranians can produce 45 drones at the same cost.”
I’m no fan of the Ukraine War or the Leftists that gave us the war, but if that bag had been filled with decent-sized diamonds, $90k would have been a good deal. The point being that I don’t know enough about those bushings to say whether they were worth 90k, or something close to it. If they’re standard automotive quality, then no, but if they’re for landing gear on a carrier, then maybe yes.
Long ago, back in my auto industry days (before I got in the plumbing business), one of our engineers showed me a blueprint for a timing chain cover - which is single piece of metal with tons of curves, bolt holes, gasket surfaces, etc. The large sheet of paper was almost completely filled by the very complicated drawing. He then told me that there were 6 more pages to the drawing.
If we were planning to produce 40 engines using this cover, rather than hoping to produce 400,000 engines, I could have EASILY seen it costing us $90,000 each (in today’s dollars, at least).