Think you'll find there was more than just weapons capability in the mix... ergo... go back a few years to when Typhoon was just being rolled out, the Mod had a large cache of blue collar workers, working under various guises, with associated pension costs, including a nice shiny new hangar at an airbase in south wales fixing aeroplanes, that they wanted to offload. Enter Bae with an offer to take on all the blue collar workers, if Mod agreed Bae could be sole maintenance provider for Harrier, Tornado, and Typhoon. So, the deal was done, and it was found that the hourly rate being charged by Bae, was over twice what it had been costing Mod directly. However the only way out of the contract and associated high maint costs without having to pay Bae a huge penalty clause was if the fleet was scrapped or otherwise disposed of.... or something like that.