The Type 45 argument separates the cost of individual ships from research, development, tooling, and yard preparation already paid for by the programme. On the estimates used here, the six ships cost about £6 billion overall, while another six could have added roughly £1.8 billion. A guest suggests that cancellation fees and financial misconduct could explain the outcome; Alex corrects the fee premise because the later batches were never ordered. Additional hulls could have supplied surge capacity or replaced ships entering long refits, with crews moving between them. The criticism is that stopping at six sacrificed those options after paying the development costs. The planning assumption behind the small force was that allies would contribute additional escorts around a British carrier group in wars they chose to fight together.
Notable Point · 2:06:50-2:11:48
How Type 45 cuts sacrificed cheap follow-on hulls
The cost argument for more Type 45s compares already-paid development costs with cheaper later hulls and the lost capacity to cover refits or surge demand.