I'm with Max: the Black Hawk is definately no piece of poo. It is the ants pants.
If flying into harms way - that is the machine I want to be in. Prefer it in the predator mode though! Always struck me as a mistake in the Tiger Project to put AFS with Recce and not with utility. Recce needs to be small and sensor heavy, utility can be big enough to carry sufficient hate. We should have bought less Tigers and some Predator Black Hawks. Still have "commonallity" but can now do the job!
But the NH-90 may well prove to be a good battlefield helo as well...time will tell us that. However, I think it is always a risky business for a small country like Australia to buy anything other than American purely for interoperability and supportability. Even more so for NZ. NZ and Aus should try and align their buys for the same reason.
The yanks shoot down chinooks that dont look like theirs, and even have a go at the Lynx even though it is a common type of their biggest Ally. Imagine how they will react to seeing a Tiger or NH-90 fly past???
put my arse in the hawk please......