Speaking of them as a possible Sea King replacement...
Evalu8er mentioned that Merlin can do 2 out of 3 things - payload/protection/range - i'm guessing SK is even worse?
So, for the Junglies, all three of those issues are fairly critical, their job being an assault helicopter force, so need long range for over the horizon lifts, protection to be able to fly into well protected areas, and still carry plenty of Booties.... which Merlin cannot do so well? At least compared to other aircraft?
So the question I ask here, is which priority should these be in? Then, once prioritised, which aircraft type would be best to replace it?
I understand that thats a fairly simplistic way of looking at it - cost and training/logs infrastructure also must count, but I'm wondering at the basic type vs type level...
The two i've heard thrown about the most are Merlin as mentioned, and a marinized version of Chinook (if such a thing exists?)