Finally, some sense and some informed comments. Thank you.
Very interesting and sadly inevitiable that we are forced into buying a product that is not really suitable merely because
a) it keeps Westlands going
b) if we don't spend the money, we lose it.
If we limit ourselves to the smaller aircraft then we can't really do the job asked of us, but if we go for the bigger aircraft, we might not get it and may run the danger of "wearing white socks."
Unbelievable. A few rhetorical questions.
Is there a danger of us loosing LUH's totally and becoming an all AH force? Or will we have a few LUH's just supporting AH and have to leave 16Bde in the hands of (an RAF led and admitidly competant) SH force? Or could we expand our SH force in the army and do 16Bde and leave the RAF SH to support Apache?
The last scenario could be the most useful for us: we fly up to and beyond the FEBA flying (our) soldiers around while the RAF do what they genuinely do better than us: lug about all the fuel, bombs and associated stuff for AH.
Why not? Soldiers flying about the soldiers and the Air Force lugging all our kit for our Attack Helicopters