> the F-35 isn't any more expensive than other aircraft. For example for the latest budget proposal (2022), the DoD plans to acquire 85 F-35s [1] for a total price of $85 BN, or about $150 MM per plane.

But isn't that in all probability the same kind of thing as large American IT companies do with their international subsidiaries, i.e. moving money around on paper to where it looks the best?

That is, Dell and Facebook and Apple and so on have their European headquarters in Ireland (where corporate taxes are the lowest, and on top of that they negotiate sweet deals to make it even lower), and pay the mother company "royalties" for "use of intellectual property" to siphon profits away to where they're hardly taxed at all. In a similar way, defense contractors make the sale price look like what they think gives the best chance to get the sale (including what the great unwashed public will "buy", so they don't put pressure on their politicians, and those in turn on the military, to reject it) -- but then add that money on to maintenance contracts or future development where it's less visible here and now.

Looking at just the stated "sale price" and thinking that that actually represents the "true cost" of a machine seems rather naïve to me.