dc1968,
I really don't have any personal loyalty to the Puma - I do not, never have and never will fly it, so my comments were not driven out of any sense of loyalty to the platform. I was merely arguing that whilst the CH-47 is a good ac, having nothing but CH-47 will leave the RAF's rotary fleet unbalanced, potentially putting the RAF at a disadvantage if the future operating environment does indeed develop in the way Defence seems to think it will.
Plus, if you can't get a Puma on a ship, you're going to have even more problems with a Merlin!