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In the 1980s, the military had its infamous $800 toilet seat. Today, it has a $17,000 drip pan.
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Two separate, though related issues, but the media usually throws them together. Not all waste is fraud or abuse, some of it is just stupidity.
The "infamous" $800 toilet seats were the result of MIL-SPEC procurement rules. The toilet seat had to fit the specific parameters of the toilet, which was designed to fit the specific parameters of the toilet's location in the aircraft. You had a very specific design, for a relatively small number of aircraft, so all the R&D and production costs went to a small number of units, with no way to reach any economies of scale. In this sense, the toilet seats aren't much different than the incredibly expensive multimillion dollar aircraft they ended up on.
Partly in reaction to the infamy of the toilet seat and some hammer deal I vaguely remember, the Reagan Administration pushed through rules to allow for more off the shelf procurement, but bureaucrats being bureaucrats, it is easier to write an RFP based on what you know (dimensions of toilet, for example), than think outside the box and maybe make an easy fix to the toilet design so you can get your seats at Home Depot.
This drip pan story sounds more like the abuse category, where competitive bidding goes out the door in favor of a constituent. Still, I wonder if we have the full story even here. CH-46s are not UH-60s. I would rather hear what other UH-60 users are spending for drip pans for comparison. VX Aerospace is run by former Navy guys but apparently doesn't have a drip-pan contract for the SH-60 (otherwise, why mention the CH-46 contract?). Given the small number of CH-46s left in service (phased out by the Navy and being phased out by the Marine Corps), maybe VX Aerospace is looking for business? If they can build one for the UH-60 for eight times less, more power to them, but Mr. Skillen doesn't actually claim that. Also, it appears that VX Aerospace has gotten its share of sole source contracts too (see
here and
here for example), so they are perhaps not opposed to non-competitive bidding on principle.
So I suspect there is more to the story.