"The Typhoon contract which has been lambasted for many years for tying us into a situation where it will cost us more to cancel than to buy aircraft which we no longer need."
I think the contact for tying us to the commit numbers of aircraft was mainly due the germans back in the mid 90's when T 2 was being signed and germans want to cut numbers bought but still wanted the the same production share of building the Typhoon..
so the T3 contact was set so no one could back out of the commited numbers sign up for.