We Need To Talk

Yesterday a military blimp broke free of its moorings and floated around for a few hours trailing one mile of heavy cable. What I found interesting in this story is that this Raytheon blimp costs $200 million dollars. $200 million dollars for a blimp?

Then the DoD in its infinite wisdom awarded a contract for new bombers. From the headlines they will cost "$564M Per Plane".

The last bomber built in the US was St. Ronnie's B-2. Prior to getting a new glass cockpit the delivered cost was $2.4 billion dollars; toss in the cockpit upgrades and this bad boy comes in around $3 billion.

Riddle me this Batman: how is it possible to build a new bomber that costs 2 1/2 times what one of these blimps cost?