Jacko,
You are very much correct. Especially with airmobile/air assualt operations there is certainly a requirement to deliver and recover small teams of 4 (approx) in all sorts of roles into the forward area where a puma and certainly a Merlin/Chinook would be considered too large/valuable an asset to be risked.
I think the problem is that having seen the AH capability be so succesful the Lynx community are desperate to be given the tools to deliver meaningful capability in a similarily professional manner and that was always envisaged at front line to continue with the small lift capability.
Lynx has always struggled in this regard as despite the 9 seats in the back, the combination of poor cabin space and lack of hot/high performance always frustrated the execution of this role. The limited movement of men and materiel no doubt improved from Scout/Gazelle days however when you do a job you always want to do it better. Not unreasonable therefore for the crews to expect a future aircraft to improve your capability in this area. Not so however; the cabin space and seating is to be reduced to perhaps that of the Scout (or less) so we lose the capability altogether as the roles are rewritten.
I think rather than Apache replace Gazelle and a new aircraft replace Lynx as was stated we have a situation where the Apache is more of a Lynx replacement with the Lynx now about to take on the Gazelle roles of direction of fire and recce/Istar.
I have no doubt that it will be better 'kit' loosely speaking but the point is it could have been so much more. This is before you start to talk about poor design for the battlefield and a whole host of other issues with Lynx; low speed handling springs to mind with the same disk but higher AUM.
Navy Lynx tick VG; Army Lynx remains a massive compromise, competes with unmanned ISTAR and will not deliver men, materiels or direct firepower to the battlespace. A retrograde step I fear rather than introducing a broader or more capable contribution to commanders.
As an aside, it is difficult to maintain the comitment to Ops for Apache with the current fleet; how many operational aircraft does 38 Lynx allow you to deliver to PJHQ?
No doubt there are many other opinions on this debacle, these are just my own,
HEDP