Well, LW,as usual, I concur with just about all of your comment and reasoning. Perhaps I would have added that Comanche would fail because it would inevitably lead the Army hierarchy to having to explain why they didn’t shut down the goal post moving exercise with the tactical system and proceed. You will recall that there were repeated statements that the technology developed thru the Comanche program would be implemented in the other Army vertical lift programs. That never happened, thus the subject would be, you would think,a non-starter for resurrecting Comanche*.
AND, I would add the Bell 360,which with the 525 rotor and a 3000 SHP engine,is right on top of the original RAH-66 power/thrust wise**. Baby Comanche? No.
*An open question is whether the requirements specs for the FARA mission system have been agreed upon within the Army even now, and what the job split between FARA and drone will be?
**OK,the Comanche had 3126 SHP.
I was a Comanche fan as well,and the Boeing/Sikorsky relationship,as I observed in person in the flight test arena, went very well. The Comanche Flight Test Director was a Boeing man,Clarence Hutchinson, and he was simply the best. Only witnessed as a guest one Defiant flight, but there were Boeing folks side by side with SA folks in the telemetry rooms and seemed like all was going like I used to see on the RAH-66.