In "Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years at Lockheed", which is a great read, there is discussion of the incredibly difficult time they had setting up too

In "Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years at Lockheed", which is a great read, there is discussion of the incredibly difficult time they had setting up tooling for working with titanium. This remains largely true today. Making things at any scale in titanium, while controlling cost is very, very difficult. Even if the titanium itself is gotten very cheaply.