I worked for a defense contractor in my rookie days. And the company came under fire for billing $400 a piece for 24 hammers that accompanied the tool kit of avionics test equipment. The Mil Spec required the hammers to be a certain size. Even though a $20 Ace Hardware hammer was certainly close enough, and easily could do the job. But dope. The company had to make, from scratch, 24 hammers. After cut & die costs plus fair profit market? $400 a piece. (If of course we were able to make 100s of thousands? Then price per unit would have been competitive. But nope. 24. And no more!)
I think many remember the days of $1000 toilets and accusations of price gouging? When in fact it was how military requirements were met to procure systems and hardware. This came to a head late Reagan, early Bush 1 administration's. Today, they expanded "Best commercial practices." To their mil spec language that resolved many, but not all, small procurement requirements.
Just thought I would share a "Hammer" tale. (Sorry, no pictures. Military don't like pictures of even non classified components that support, then, classified system.) Today? I believe an iPhone app could do the processing of a whole 80's testing system. Lol.