revealing your ignorance getting worked up about this stuff

Disagreeing with other people is fine, but I ask you to do it in a manner that doesn't belittle people.

Let me try:

I don't understand your point of view, you're talking about DoD work and cost but the topic is seemingly non-DoD work. Could it be quite like what you put forth yourself; a couple of external people working on software, analysis, training and similar?

Now I invite you to present arguments to why OP's question is ignorance due to the "obviously too low price". Maybe I'll understand what you mean and end up supporting your argument?

As a non-native English speaker, I also ask you to clarify how asking a question shows ignorance. From how I understand how words work, ignorance would be more like never asking questions.

Can I interpret it as "Asking questions shows that you don't know the answer"?

Preventing leaks and stopping whistleblowers sure sounds a lot like Data Loss Prevention, which anyone and everyone should value.

They're an IT consultant. It's not far fetched to think a governmental agency handling classified material would seek to implement measures to prevent the dissemination of such material. They're highly likely to have instances of UAP that happen to be actual flights from classified developmental aircraft, and it stands to reason that such instances rightly deserve to be kept secret and the leaking of such information poses a security risk. And honestly, we really need to get better at using the terms around whistleblowing.

Is AARO doing something illegal, immoral, illicit, unsafe or fraudulent? If not it's just old fashioned leaking. Just because you think you have a right to such information doesn't mean that it's illegal for it to be kept from you.