BR71,
I think you are very much understating the costs associated with acquiring a new helicopter platform. If we bought 46 Huey II in place of the MRH90, it really would have cost a lot less. I was rather coming from where we are right now, where we are, where your proposal would be an increase in the number of aircraft we operate, and another type we would have to sustain.
The costs associated with any new purchase are only partly explained by the platform. We have a unit cost of $35M per MRH90, with no role equipment. times 46, that makes about $1.6BN. The other costs associated with the project are TLS, simulators, role equipment, training contracts, other training devices and facility upgrades. This includes funding for the systems project office personnel and links to the engineering authority.
This buys us 46 aircraft which are fly by wire, with integrated systems architecture, with upgrade potential, with new engines at the start of their development life. It includes floatation systems, external tanks, chaff and flare dispensers, FLIR, MFD, ballistic protection, crashworthy seats for all occupants, FDR, CVR, maintenance management information systems, a mission planning suite, and weather radar.
These aircraft have already demonstrated a deck landing envelope roughly twice that of Black Hawk, and their blades can be folded without use of a crane. The aircraft has wheels - it can be easily towed around the deck of a naval platform. It is made of composites, and so will not need the kinds of stringent corrosion preventative measures a Huey would when used as an amphibious assault platform.
Almost as an aside, it has 18 seats for soldiers and an endurance on internal fuel of over 5 hours. The only other aircraft that even comes close to meeting the requirement established by defence, and agreed to by government is Black Hawk Mikes, or Merlin. Merlin is too big and too expensive, Black Hawk lost the competition, so we have MRH 90.
As I said, your proposal is to pay a lot less money for a lot less capability.
Just because Huey was acceptable when Col Joye was on the wireless doesn't mean it's acceptable now. The fact that it would be cheap is kind of irrelevant, because it would be an additional cost to AIR 9000.
As I said, Hueys for light utility, great idea. MRH90 was selected for a reason - actually for dozens of reasons. Your suggestion that HueyII could do the same job does not stand scrutiny.