WM - I'd rather see money spent on supporting the assets we currently have then writing up some wish list for very specialist aircraft that no UK government is likely ever to approve.
I don't think many folk realise how thinly strung the resources are for supporting the Chinook fleet. Everyone at Odious is doing their damnedest to keep the UKs most useful asset in the current climate operational and its not easy. Robbing PEPs has gone from being an occasional task to a routine one. Quite often PEPs are now being deployed with flight critical parts missing from them as there is just too little slack in the system to allow spare parts to sit on the shelf.
This 'just in time' logistics support policy supported with such vigour by many in the ivory towers is a ticking time bomb and only some damn hard work and ingenuity is stopping it going off.