Comanche was up to 60 mil a copy and years past the original scheduled timeline. This was due to a lot of things, not the least of which was the Army continually changing it's requirements. The Comanche was asked to do pretty much everything and got bogged down in the technical implementation of a difficult requirements document that was itself a moving target.
In the end, the Comanche was taking up some 40% of the Army's aviation budget and would have resulted in a production run well under 200 helicopters. By canceling the project, many hundreds of current helos can get needed upgrades, production can restart to boost existing fleets that are reaching end of lifecycle airframe retirements or suffering from simple airframe shortages, and the Army can also focus more on their next generation networked and integrated force structure. Needy projects include the next generation heavy lift helicopter and possibly a stealthy UCAV that can accomplish the first-day stealthy attack role that drove a lot of the Comanche's expensive development.
Of course, the Pentagon and Congress still need to agree on what that money will be used for, since the war on terrorism is underfunded by some 20 billion dollars. In the worst case, the money from Comanche may get put back into the general fund instead of being redirected to other underfunded Army aviation programs.
According to Aviation Week and Space Technology that is.
