Helmut
Thanks for your reply and I thought you made some valid points. I'm as aware as everyone else (are you listening in Yeovil!) of the limitations of Lynx in its various guises. What I was trying to do is to try and discuss what the roles of the BLUH will be not how crap Lynx will be at them!
In particular to address a few points you made:
1. Although you say whoppee do - actually an extremely important task and one likely to occupy a lot of the flying hours on exercise I think.
2. when you say a warrior section - do you mean as in 9 blokes to fit in an AFV? If so I guess u must be in 1 Regt!
Personally I think we should be getting away from the concept that BLUH will be delivering combat power around the battlefield. In my initial post you will note that I specifically didn't mention troops. I accept the point about fitting an AH engine aboard though. IMHO all AH major assemblies/special tools must be capable of being carried in the BLUH cabin.
The comcept of BLUH carrying around fuel/ammunition for the AH is another red herring. Lets remember that a FARP containing two AH arming and refuelling points needs 4 DROPs to just carry the ammo! Lots of SH is the only way to do that so a flown in FARP will be a major Bde op (BTW SH are now integral to 16 Bde so that removes that problem).
3. Agree with you on the current sight. Important to note that I'm not talking about recce in the sense of a tactical op requiring aviation fieldcraft, etc but as a fly ahead with FARP/FOB Comd, etc , check out a few locations, walk the ground, decide on its suitability, etc. Therefore there is no real requirement for a sight. Under no circumstances do I envisage BLUH being used as an AOP aircraft.
4. Almost certainly it wouldn't be possible to fit every aircraft with the IDM/MFD but hopefully every aircraft would have the loom, etc to allow the boxes to be swapped over (ideally a 10-15 min procedure!). This would alleviate the MAUM weight problem.
5. Important to remember that CSAR is a package starting with AWAC, CAP, CAS, AH for area protection and then at the end an aircraft that actually picks the bloke up. Self defence is important but BLUH isn't going to have to do it all by itself!
Agree with you on the need to improve surviveability/crashworthiness though.
As far as lifting in patrols go it is a task that BLUH will be doing but IMHO it is a secondary task to those outlined above. Ultimately BLUH exists to support the AH and therefore it is those tasks that it must be designed for. Whatever aircraft we have is never going to have enough weight/space to satisfy the Paras so we need to be aware of that. BLUH is not an SH and I don't think we should push it towards being one.