Ah sod it! Can't resist throwing my tuppence in!
For what it's worth (probably not that much), I attended a briefing on BLUH last year. The old S-70 vs Super Lynx was quickly raised at question time with all the compelling arguments given for the Shytalk. The presenter was, inspite of the clearly overwhelming urge to toe the party line, willing to concede the S-70 was by far a better aircraft for the job. The issue however was one of finance. In the preceding months our witless friends in the corridors of power in Whitehall had decided to divert £850 million from the Sea Harrier (Stick that in your pipe and smoke fish-heads!
) to the BLUH project. As welcome as this funding was, it was limited in buying scope and how long the funding was available for. Essentially, presenter chap was saying that if the Army Air Corps didn't choose an acft that was within budget and able to be in service by around 2008, it would lose the funding all together. Admittedly I have precied what he said but essentially the jist was use it or lose it. Given that the S-70 unit cost was about £30mil compared to about £8.99 for Super Lynx the AAC was pretty much hamstrung into opting for Lynx.
I see now from previous posts that the funding has been delayed and therefore so has BLUH, so who knows what's going to happen. What was so frustrating at the time was that everbody in the AAC from the Director down wanted S-70 as it fits the bill perfectly. However the reality was/is that doctrine does not drive capabilty as it is supposed to (as taught at the Joint Staff and death-by-powerpoint College), pocket money does! How naive was I to ever think otherwise?
I know from first hand, that the S-70 is the best capability option for BLUH for all the reasons given by the postees above and for many more. I think that the reality however is that Army has blown its wad with WAH-64D and that if it doesn't buy Super Lynx, they're going to get the square root of sweet FA. What a sad state of affairs.
