As a commander in the field, would you prefer to have helicopter support widely available to your unit and other sub-units, or have two or three bright, shiny high-tech aircraft that, (even if they were serviceable and based anywhere near you), simply had to be rationed to such a degree that they could only be made available in highly critical circumstances?
That's not even going into the question of whether the rare as bat**** shiny new toys could carry the load (or as much load as the sneered at "HQey" could) or even be capable of operating into your LZ if you were in a hot and high location?
Nor whether the tasking agency was willing to put said shiny rare toy at risk if your loc. was (or went) hot?
MTOW likened our chopper selections to "using a Boeing 777 to carry 30 pax from Sydney to Dubbo" in an earlier post. With the choppers we're buying, I can't see them being even marginally economical in being used for 90% of the tasking I used to see in the field. (And let's face it, whether you like it or not, costs, both acquisition and operating, have to be considered.) I can see sub-units waiting a very long time - or having to move overland to 'hubs' - to get vitally needed supplies as multiple tasking requests are 'bundled' into one 'more economical' sortie.
.... or the military falling back on contracting to civilian operators for the 'bread and butter' stuff - surely not something that should be part of any planning strategy? Have the bean counters gained such ascendancy that 'surge capability' has been replaced with 'just in time'? If the military own and operate those 'bread and butter' aircraft, in an emergency, they can be employed outside their role, in some cases accepting risks - even losses - that would be considered unacceptable in normal operations. With civilian contractors, particularly foreign civilian contractors (as seen in Iraq and Afghanistan), any such outside normal role is very problematic.