Good point Jukra, I would say the Russians were pawning off an obsolete 1934 light bomber design on the Czechoslovak Air Force (the Pe-2 was their nextgen light bomber). I would have gone the route of the Finns and bought the license to make the Blenheim but even that aircraft was obsolete by 1940. Granted, without escorts all bombers were extremely fragile to 6-8-gun or cannon armed fighters from 1939-1945. The ability for a nation to have air superiority over the battlefield enabled light bombers and dive bombers to do their job. Poorly planned Douhet tactics in the aviation world allowed those same bombers to be unescorted and led to needless aviation losses. That is why the P-36 was just good enough to provide air superiority, be upgraded with 6-guns, and fast enough to escort light/medium bombers in the 1939-1941 period when most of the air battles were at low or medium altitudes.
In Czech case, if there's no will by politicians to fight there's no need to invest in defense anyway. As for bombers, were they a waste of money for Czechoslovakia? They were planning to fight against Germany, a much stronger aerial power. They had good artillery and short distances. As a land locked country there were no possibilities of naval landings. More fighters would make better sense, IMHO.
Ironically, whatever we could design for a low-cost air force for 1938-39 would only survive to 1941 unless you could throw it away and then buy new equipment in 1941 or had the industry that could upgrade those same aircraft. Unfortunately there weren't many countries with the industrial capability to make their own powerplants or even upgrade existing powerplants, let alone upgrade a bought aircraft like England, Russia, Germany, France, & USA.
Exactly, that's why AAA investments make more sense, while of course some aircraft need to be bought anyway.