Teet,
I'm not sure which Army product you think has been improved by DHFS!! The Army product that was achieved in the 9 months (no fannying about, so eloquently described) was a decent product. 60 hours Chippie and 140 hours Gazelle qualified you as a competent captain on the Gazelle.
Of course, Theatre Qualification then meant further training, and with close supervision/guidance/development you were in the right seat of a single pilot helicopter doing your job at about the one year point - still very closely supervised.
Crab - why would we want/require policing from any outsider? We always had a good smattering of well respected Crabs in our training system and at operational level - we didn't need them, we wanted them.
The Army training system evolved due to various factors, some were -
Economy - In striving to cut the chop rate, flying grading was introduced. Initially on the Chipmunk at MW. It was working just fine until the end of the Chippie's reasonable working life. Then instead of replacing our Chippie's at MW, we broke the system and started sending our pilots elsewhere.
CREST - Crew restructuring, someone had the brilliant idea that two pilots flying an aircraft certified as "single pilot," was better.
DHFS - just as we were getting the upper hand on the two pilot system, MOD came up with the brilliant idea of centralisation for helicopter training.
Of course, we all evolve, and so we should, some of the evolutionary stages are difficult but necessary, however, please don't be under the misapprehension that the 9 month Army Pilot needed improvement. He was capable and well trained. He also suited the needs of the Army and his career and capability progression was very straight forward. I doubt if that is still the case.
tam