unfortunatley most our airpower since the end of the 1960's was configured to fight on the west german plain. Very little consideration was made to deploying assets a long way from home and with limited infrasturucture. In the design requirements abilities like able to operate in hot/hig enviroments was left out of specification as it added unnecessary expense ( would also sugest limited export options as well).
Its beem sugested that some additional elements would be useful in Afghanistan and I would sugest Iraq and probably FRY an stol fixed wing aircraft with the capicity between the CH47 and the C130 like the CN239/Cn295/C27J which would take alot of the strain of the ch47 fleet.
Since the 80's we were meant to develop an airmobile brigade but that appears to have been set up to run short but frequent hops hence the lack of airframes.
The Helecopters and some of the tactics developed in Northern Ireland have matured well and i believe we had a head start over our allies. The integration of Apache has been good.
However we still need to maintain a balance Eurofighter and Nimrod are still needd in the inventory Nimrod is actually proving an interesting force multiplier.
We do need to look at the airframes we operate and the specification for their replacements and invest the money in aircraft that can work over large areas of the planet not just where we have been fighting wars but areas where we may have to go for one reason or another. I do beleive that the transport side of the RAF/FAA both roary and fixed wing needs to expand and devlop different levels.