Headstone - it proved that the questioner was chasing up a blind alley and clearly knew sod all about what he was trying to find out about. All the answers were quite reasonable, and what you'd expect. The only "better" way to do it from a procurement point of view would be to combine development, production and in-service into 1 contract to give MoD the best negotiating position, but given the volatility of the overall programme (how many are we buying etc.) this was almost certainly unrealistic/unlikely to be in the MoDs best interest, and therefore they have almost certainly taken the best approach in the circumstances.
It does usefully prove that many of the "stone throwers" at these kind of programmes are ill-informed mud rakers who should be treated on such occassions with a large amount of contempt.