And while he will do this at a considerable profit, it will theoretically be better executed per dollar that the military doing it in a separate division. Another post claims he will generate sorties more than twice as efficiently.

So the above is either true or false.

If it is false and the contract costs taxpayers more than the military would then, as you suspect, it is entirely a pork-barrel waste of money. The fact that other nations with highly regraded military don't do this theoretical efficiency boost strongly supports this.

If it is true and the contractor is somehow more efficient, then that is even more worrisome. Scarier still is that it is taken as an inevitable state of affairs and no one seems concerned about it. That US destroyers have a catastrophically bad helm UI supports this, even though that would be conspicuous pork-barrel in it's own right.

Same with the fact the sale was F18s. Either the enemy has them or not. In one case it's pork-barrel, in the other case the US has somehow sold fighters to an enemy.