Why do people get hung up on this? Specialty parts cost a lot.
To have a trained air force employee designing toilet seats is questionable, is that what the military should do? Maybe and the air force should explore 3D printers, so it's a waste that might be worth it. But lets not pretend $10,000 went to $300.
The Air Force’s $10,000 toilet cover - https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/capitalbusiness/the-...
I wonder if there are any follow ups on what else they 3D printed?
The military is kind of an odd organization. As the world in general increasingly specializes, the military doesn't. Not really. At the end of the day the military is there to "interface" with the rest of the world - and that's basically been how it was and how it's going to continue to be. Them having knowledge of how things - even toilet seats - are manufactured could be legitimately useful in their military function. It's essentially letting them get a first-hand view on how the world - particularly in terms of manufacturing - works. What steps, technology, infrastructure, etc etc are required to build things?
Ideally of course they would, and still should, get subject matter experts in to advise them for strategy and planning and all that. But it's somewhat naive to suggest this is likely to work perfectly all the time. It rarely does, because humans are going to human. If they can get some hands on experience it gives them some trusted internal people who can better communicate with the subject matter experts and ultimately reach better conclusions.
I think what's important is not they bought 3 toilet seats for $10,000 on planes that costs $100,000 a hour to fly.
Universal Camouflage Pattern costing $5 billion to develop and make, then gets ditched because it sucked feels like a bigger story. How does that happen.... Isn't that the military's main interface with the world.
The US government and military do plenty of things badly, and plenty of things well, and practically none of the people discussing them have any idea what either category actually contains.
Additionally as always with complex regulations and specifications there are ways to comply maliciously. This means comply by letter but charge for bullshit.
Another bonus are hurdles to enter the market for your competitors. If they don't know how to talk with government and comply they can't sell to government. This makes things expensive for government.
If every single part of the toilet has to be manufactured from raw materials, and fully tested and documented at each step of the manufacturing process, then a toilet can add up to $20k easily.
Also, anything that will be installed in a regular old non-military passenger plane is extremely expensive, because they must be able to prove that parts will not break off mid-flight, that it will not catch fire, and will be manufactured consistently and reliably.
In the perspective of Chinese government, it is simply unacceptable that a toilet ordered by the air force cost more than $20k, or the number of ship manufacturers diminishes over years, or the average age of NASA engineers went from below 36 to above 55, or the best minds of the country spends their prime time figuring out how to increase CTR for ads revenue. Manufacturing and advanced research is a key to a nation, and China recognizes it.