"Why would "hundreds of millions" be considered too much?"
Ask the Treasury.......... maybe it's because the outcomes are so much higher than the initial estimates every time - we started out going to buy a decent number of 45's and the cost led to cuts, we were going to buy a load of Astute's but that has been trimmed back due to cost escallation - and now the 26's are going down the same route
personally I'd like to see a steady building programme over years so the fixed costs are reduced and we get some thing out of the learning curve as well as a decent sized force but when every £ has to be argued for every year it is a very very tough sell politically
No doubt tomorrow we'll see further rightward drift on all sorts of defence programmes so the Chancellor can meet his targets and stay in the running to replace Dave......