The roughly six-billion-pound Type 45 program included research and development rather than representing the marginal cost of each destroyer. Research, development, and design were already paid for, so cancelling the last three ships surrendered the declining unit cost available from continued production. The estimate given here is that nine ships would have cost only modestly more than six, with additional hulls becoming cheaper as the line reused established work. Governments can count large research budgets as defense investment while failing to convert that knowledge into enough deployable units.
Notable Point · 1:14:57-1:16:39
Type 45 program cost obscured the price of additional ships
Counting research and development against each Type 45 made the class look prohibitively expensive even though later hulls would have reused completed design work.