In our recent discussion on maritime patrol the subject of Australia’s purchase of the Northrop Grumman MQ-4C Triton unmanned aircraft came up. The subject of its cost came up and there was some confusion as to what exactly was the cost of them, did it include bell A and whistle B and did the cost include hangars, runways, drainage ditches and the maintainers toilet facilities :)

Another source might throw some light on the subject.

Defence Aerospace has a very interesting article on the German Euro Hawk SIGINT version of the Triton, called the RQ-4E, click here to read it in full.

Without going too deep into that rather dire piece of procurement buffonery it mentions the cost of three Triton aircraft;

The initial cost estimate of the US Navy from May 2014 for three Tritons, including all operationally necessary system components, such as e.g. ground station, is $648 million [600 million euros] (not including import sales tax and customs duties)

Which with a quick conversion courtesy of Uncle Google;

£140m each

This was excluding the SIGINT payload.

It would also seem the NATO Alliance Ground Surveillance (AGS) is also in a spot of bother.

They do have some nice videos though