When a defence acquisition fails, the economic question does not close with termination or settlement. A government may win a legal claim without receiving cash, receive cash without acquiring replacement spending power, or hand back equipment that remains industrially unusable until its condition, records, configuration and release status have been established. The same separation operates on the receiving side: equipment leaving a discontinued national programme can re-enter a multinational industrial system without yet becoming a serviceable spare, an accepted component or additional flying hours. These are not pedantic distinctions. They determine whether a headline figure describes money in a treasury account or a claim still working its way through a budget, and whether returned hardware represents supply relief for fleets under strain or a stockpile awaiting inspection that may never be economic to perform. The Norwegian withdrawal from the NH90 programme is unusually well documented at each of these joints, which makes it a rare opportunity to watch the conversion happen — and to see precisely where the public record stops. The question worth asking is therefore not how much Norway recovered, but how far along two distinct chains that recovery has actually travelled, and what the answer implies for the value locked inside other European programmes that will be curtailed, terminated or reconfigured in the years ahead.