Given the realities (ie corruption and incompetence) of the current Pentagon procurement system, if this project doesn't get killed it will be lucky to produce more than a handful of aircraft, at a cost of several billion dollars each.

It's how you sell new weapons systems. This one's all about threatening China because it's hard to talk up the usefulness of $500m+ bombers against insurgencies.

The contractors lie about capability and cost because they want to win the contract. The DoD accepts these lies because it wants shiny new toys. Congress goes along with it as long there's pork involved. No-one learns anything because there's no incentive to avoid corrupt behaviour. The MICC at its finest.

Reality intervenes and the project goes overbudget. Production gets cut, yet it doesn't really save any money. The project continues through several cycles of the death spiral until it is either cancelled or delivers a product. And we end up with the congress critters getting their pork, contractors getting their piles of money, DoD getting their shiny new toys, along with promotions for anyone who didn't end up holding the bag. The troops end up with nothing or a handful of gold-plated weapons with less capability than they were promised. Oh, and the taxpayer gets screwed, but that's the usual outcome.

You're partially correct, though you should be blaming the Marines and their idiotic STOVL requirements for screwing over the JSF requirements before blaming the Navy. STOVL forced the development of a costly large single engine instead of using two smaller existing engines, as well as requiring a non-stealthy rear exhaust nozzle and imposing other constraints on weight and size.

Don't give the RIAA and MPAA execs ideas. Imagine receiving multiple copies of their standard legal shakedown letters, each threatening a copyright lawsuit in a different jurisdiction where you may have been infringing.

It could be the $750m unit cost plus a share of the total R&D costs, then inflated to current day dollars.