The avionics - radars, optics, comm, signal processing, flight management, etc. - really are a cost driver. For example, todays fighters are inherently unstable, which means they obtain stability in flight by constantly monitoring conditions and adjusting the control surfaces to achieve "stable" flight. That requires not only a lot of instrumentation, but processing power; on the F-16, three militarized computers that "vote" on the correction, at a cost in the neighborhood of $100K each. The phased array radar in the nose of the AC could easily add upwards of $2M.
I wouldn't be surprised if the avionics was 30% or more of per unit cost.
However, a lot of the avionics can be upgraded.
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