Touchy Bunch!! I've had enough, try this out for size:
1) EH-101 is proven in service, my butt. Yep, and proven in accidents, guys. How about those five pesky crashes it has had (it lost 1/3rd of its prototype fleet, for pete's sake!) Look at the stats. It has an accident rate of about 11 per 100,000 hours, which makes it the most unsafe heli on the planet, ten times the accident rate a good navy experiences. Anybody out there have any stats on their country's heli operations? I think the world average for military ops is about 2 per 100,000 hours. Go ahead prove me wrong.
2) The EH-101 can't get itself off the ground very often. If I figure it correctly, most military helis get about 500 hours per year, so a 90 aircraft fleet of EH-101's should be gatherin time at about 45,000 hours every year. The whole fleet only has 45,000 hours, if the press reports about its massive service record are to be believed. Given that it has been building its fleet over the last 10 years, it seems that the typical EH-101/Cormorant/Merlin gets about 100 hours per year. Somebody out there give me some tail numbers that got more time than that last year, ok? Prove me wrong, all you wonder-boys!
3) Big press reports about running out of spare parts because the British military were too dumb to buy enough parts, so the EH's can't be flown enough. That's like the idiot who says his tire is flat because it doesn't have enough air! Its running through parts like it runs through petrol!
4) Its payload sucks. Lappos asked you guys to give him an empty weight, here it is - Nick, the Cormorant's are about 20,000 lbs fully stripped of all removable equipment (some brave Cormorant driver prove me wrong, post a weight sheet!!) At 20,000 lbs, it leave a putrid 12,190 pounds for fuel, crew and payload. One glance at the efficiency of a typical REAL heli shows that for a 20,000 lb empty weight the payload should be closer to 18,000 lb. It is a dog.
5) Yes, the S-92 is brand new, that's how all helicopters start out, I think, unless Noah had one on the ark. All you idiots who demand that only proven helis should be sold do not realize that you are saying "Don't bother making any new heli designs, thank you, because I am way too scared to buy one." Bulls**t, I say. Build me newer, safer, better ones, because the ones we have now are barely ok.
Lappos, post me some more funny stories, amuse me with the possibilities. I don't know if the S-92 will hack it, but hasn't Igor built one or two of those things before?