A multitude of reasons contributed to the ultimate cancellation of the RAH-66 program. According to aviation author James Williams, efforts to speed up the program via the elimination of risk-mitigation measures and the stream of continuous adjustments to account for annual budget cuts to the rotorcraft resulted in the formation of a negative cycle that functioned to greatly extend the rotorcraft's development schedule. Over the course of the Comanche's development, multiple government agencies had acted to cut the number of helicopters that were intended to be ordered; one particularly common basis for such curtailments was that the
Cold War had ended and thus such quantities were unnecessary (a phenomenon known as the "
Peace Dividend"). However, significant reductions in volume directly resulted in the rapid climbs in the projections of the Comanche's unit cost; in turn, this stimulated and gave validity to critics of the program, such as the
Army Acquisition Executive James Ambrose, who had prominently declared that the Army would not receive any aircraft "costing a dollar over $7.5 million".
