After almost two hours briefing specialist Defence media on the program, the moral of the story turned out to be: there are two processes which drive the cost figures being cited in global media, the contracted prices and the US budget prices that are also influenced by the Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation (CAPE) figures.
These three sources are frequently different, taking into account different factors such as infrastructure and other support costs that are USspecific.
The recent re-certification of the program (only concluded last week) under new Congressional budgeting arrangements saw the introduction of the two processes which have led to the confusion over how prices are set.
The review of the project has also seen the first fixed-price aircraft set for Low Rate Initial Production (LRIP) 4, from a previous timeframe of LRIP6, giving the program a more stabilised price per aircraft earlier in the production run.
Burbage did confirm however that the final flyaway price of the aircraft for Australia would be "well below" the $133 million figure cited by other reports.