The Type 45 program performed the development work for a class expected to contain roughly nine to twelve ships. Building only six made the apparent per-ship program cost much higher because the fixed investment was divided among fewer hulls. Additional ships would have repeated an established design and therefore cost less at the margin than the first batch. The class consequently suffers from weak availability and poor use of sunk development expenditure.
Notable Point · 1:29:31-1:31:25
Cutting Type 45 numbers squandered development costs
Stopping at six Type 45 destroyers left a heavily worked fleet and spread the class's research and development bill across too few hulls.