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Twenty-one years between conception and now and it hasn't even gone into production? No wonder it costs so much! Sounds like this was a Pentagon jobs program for some of it's retired generals and colonels.

Just like the F/A-22 program as well. Didn't Lockheed win with the X-22 design sometime in the early 1990s? I'm pretty sure I was still in high school. There's hardly any production on it.

I will agree with you partly. I will say that I work for an organization close to this project. In the beginning a new aircraft was thought to be needed to replace the aging OH-58 Kiowa and AH-1 Cobra helicopters. Therefore a combined light, attack/reconnaisance helicopter was envisioned; it was called LHX (Light Helicopter eXperimental). In fact, there were two versions in the beginning....a scout/attack version and a utility version. The latter version was dropped and today's Comanche is the former. The Army could not tell the Pentagon what this aircraft should be or look like (generality here). So the the Chief of Staff or some big-wig up top came back and said, "Okay I'll tell you what it's going to be." This aircraft will weigh 7500 lbs, cost $7.5M and be ready for fielding in 7.5 years. This is the basic story I was told. Now, here begins the dilemma that doomed the helicopter from Day One. Look at this weight; the helicopter companies stated from the beginning this weight goal could not be met. The weight of the Comanche is closer to twice that much now. It would have been easy to project the $7.5M down the road as being ridiculous. To complete all R&D, testing and prototyping of the first ever stealth helicopter in 7.5 years was insane. So it was not the engineers who developed the technology that screwed the pooch on this project, it was the uninformed, know-it-alls at the top that set the requirements that never could be met. They haven't been met to this day, although a lot of good technology has been developed. In the meantime, our threat and doctrine have now changed from fighting the Russians at the Fulda Gap to fighting terrorist ragheads in the mountain caves and desert foxholes. Bottomline, Comanche doesn't fit the bill anymore.