IC,
It is not like Airbus and the rest of the EADS consortium do this for a living!! or B.
With the current round of savings that have to be made, surely this is one project that could be scrapped and have the money 'invested' in the operationally proven platforms J/C-17.
I understand each J is approx £50m, and would therefore expect the C17 to be £1-150M, again even after buying ourselves out of this white elephant we could procure a substantial number of other airframes.