What justifies the $131 billion price tag?

News Snapshot:

Maybe it’s because of the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, but few gasps were heard, no jaws went slack, when the U.S. Air Force announced last month that the price tag for its new nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missile, called the Sentinel, had suddenly gone up by 37 percent. That would put the missile program’s total cost at $131 billion. That’s twice as much as what the Air Force had estimated back in 2015, when the program was first introduced. The new estimate—and it’s just an estimate—includes the cost of developing the missile, buying 634 of them, installing 450...