> This doesn’t add up to 50k.

It's a procurement project to purchase four very specific aviation trash cans for an aircraft that's no longer made.

The cans themselves aren't the cost. The project manager, the paperwork expert who does the thousands of pages of documents, etc. all cost before they even think about setting up a production line (for an hour's run!) to actually make the things. They're also factoring in the cost of keeping the 707 trash can making machinery sitting around for the next time they need a few more of them.

Four trash cans cost $52k. Forty probably would've cost $53k. The military should probably buy four hundred so they never have to buy another one for the remaining few years the E3 exists, but then Congress calls that wasteful spending too.

Well, you can take that from someone who does it for a living (not for Boeing or the Pentagon, bit still), or not. Your choice. Whether or not 50k is actually justified or not, no idea. But the price for a new, low volume, production of obsolete aircraft spares is orders of magnitude more expensive than the original high volume one. And even it if is old stock, as soon as the low contractual prices are running out, everyone is paying market prices. And those mean: either you pay, you don't fly or you certify an alternative.