Research, design, and tooling cost much the same whether a navy ultimately orders one ship or twelve. Those fixed costs make a short class expensive per hull, while later ships mostly pay for construction and equipment. The six Type 45s became known as billion-pound destroyers because the front-loaded programme cost was divided across only six units. The estimate for the final six of the original twelve-ship plan is roughly £300 million to £350 million each, with a lower £250 million estimate explicitly rejected. Repeated production also permits iterative development and commonality, although the Chinese Type 055 example shows the value of accepting a different design when the expected advantage justifies a break.
Notable Point · 15:17-18:31
Why later ships in a class can be dramatically cheaper
The Type 45 example separates front-loaded research and tooling from marginal construction cost to show the savings lost when a class is cut in half.