Research, development, and systems integration contribute fixed costs that must be spread across the ships built. The discussion uses a £6 billion, six-ship Type 45 programme as its starting point. It then illustrates the effect of further batches with estimated follow-on prices around £300-400 million per ship, while allowing for inflation. Those hypothetical figures explain why another hull's construction cost can differ sharply from the original programme's average unit cost. Shortened production runs encourage contractors to recover development costs through fewer ships, whereas longer orders allow those costs to be spread across more units.
Notable Point · 2:46:18-2:48:02
How larger orders reduce warship unit cost
Type 45 program costs illustrate how cutting hull numbers makes each surviving ship appear more expensive.