When Northrop's bid was revealed as the winner, it was also revealed that Northrop had said it could deliver the aircraft at $511 million. But it's not clear what that price tag encompasses. Some features of the aircraft—such as sensors, nuclear weapons capability, and uncrewed flight—could be packaged under separate, classified contracts and raise the cost per plane significantly.

The point of building a half-billion-apiece aircraft with all the apparatus necessary to carry people, and then flying it without people, would be what—to protect the egos of current Air Force leaders? To make sure the Deep State® has a steady flow of un-auditable classified funding for militarily unnecessary projects? Cuz it would just be so cool?

To a significant degree these effectively go to sustain a high-tech industry: the engineers, designers, machinists, etc. But, since its classified, it does not go out to others the way the space program did (NASA software, including the engineering testing, was available at cost). And the suspicion always is that each service gets a new toy (ship, plane, tank) — one thing I liked about Rumsfield was his shutting down the "new generation artillery piece" the Army wanted.