I often shake my head at this kind of short sightedness from those at the top whho should know better. That they mmake decisions like this clearly demonstare their lake of understanding of AAvn usefulness and keenes.
When tooting around in an Army aircraft i always had the greatest confidance in the maintainers and those at the stick, as some others have said for the type of tempo and type of flying they do with their resources they do an absolutly amazing job.
Like it or not we have inherited the British military system, for all its faults it is still a reasonably good system, however some modernisation needs to ocurr, perhaps outlining exactly who operates what would be a start, or if that ignited too many turf wars we could just morph into the Australian Marine Corps and everybody is (suposidly) on-side.
Any one who has operates along side those guys and girls will understand the simulatities we share.
Personaly this would be the strucute that i would like to see, pick the best bits and go from there. Also kind of ironic the the mighty 'Bou was originaly designed for the US Army as a 100hr Army flying truck, something that seems to be lost on our currant swag of aircraft designers - simplicity,rugedness and dependability! thats pretty much all Army Aviation wants out of its gear, here and the US.
Think the days of Golden Bullet soloutions may have had its day, even the US AF is struggling for funds to buy the nubers of zoomie types it wants. Perhaps they should outsourse their procurment division and buy thousands of J-10's whilst we pin a tag on order
