Copied this over from another forum as I thought it would be of some interest to you all.
Sikorsky were recently awarded a contract for a new upgraded version of the Blackhawk helicopter. 537 airframes were ordered at a cost of $7.4 Billion USD. With support and spares packages the cost goes up to $11.8 Billion USD.
Taking the latter figure, this works out at a unit cost of approx $21m USD per aircraft - a little over £10m at the current exchange rate.
For not much more money than we are proposing to spend on approx 70 Future Lynx aircraft to be split between the Army and Royal Navy, the US Army are able to get nearly 8 times as many airframes.
Are we being bumped by Augusta Westland?