Apparently, the final cost of the airframe was the point of focus for the disagreement b/w Leonardo and Raytheon.
“Raytheon wanted to drop the price of the plane by 30 percent below Leonardo’s idea,” said the source, who was knowledgeable of the talks between the two firms. “Leonardo worked towards that but could not achieve it.”
The partnership was nearly called off in October in a dispute allegedly over control of the program.
But as underlined by R. Aboulafia (something that we had discussed even earlier):
“And it’s no secret the M-346, with a fly away cost of about $25 million, is an expensive plane — about the same price as the T-50,” he said. “For the M-346, which lags on some specifications including Gs, price was doubly important and they needed to hit the $15-18 million zone.”
It’s true that the lack of IFR would have penalized any final offer but, as it seems, that was the least problem they had in reality. Now, without any breakthrough in their offer, it’s difficult to see another chapter in the T-X story for Leonardo*. Perhaps that a deeper reflection in their choice could be a beneficial when it seems they stuck to a profit margin share disregarding the floating reality of this in the modern aero industry, especially with a production number that could have jumped from less than a hundred to several hundreds.
*And worst than that, they probably have just let the tiger out of the box with a major/dominant competitor surfacing from the competition that will invariably eat-away their own sale margin.
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