£52.5 m a pop
This from the BBC. Good news I guess but what a price!
The first of eight Chinooks mothballed at Boscombe Down for 10 years owing to lack of verifiable flight software is soon to be dispatched to Afghanistan.
The eight are undergoing a delayed £90m conversion programme being undertaken by supplier Boeing at the base to allow the Mk 3 helicopters to be declared airworthy and added to the fleet available for ferrying troops and supplies.
Defence secretary Bob Ainsworth will give a briefing at the base on Wednesday [13 January] to explain how the hugely expensive blunder has been rectified.
The total cost of the fleet soared 70 per cent to £422m, making the Mk 3 Chinook the armed forces' most costly ever helicopter at £52.5m each.
The blunder nearly a decade ago involved a failure to obtain code needed to verify aviation systems to enable the helicopters to be declared airworthy. It has never been made clear why Boeing did not supply the code and a recent allegation that it was deliberately omitted from the original contract to save money has been denied by the Ministry of Defence.
At one point the Chinooks were due to be cannibalised for parts, but the need for more helicopter lift in Afghanistan was so great a decision was taken to pay Boeing to make them airworthy