espresso drinker:
I disagree with your last statement about developing new aircraft.
Absent a hot shooting war where you need a big improvement over the enemy, there is little that will drive a military to ask for something better. Look at Sikorsky's very bold move to develop a larger version of the co-axial design. The President of Sikorsky said that if they waited for the military to put out an RFP, it would be something that might be 10% better than the Blackhawk, where their machine is significantly better.
More to the point the civil world does have a lot of innovation and development - the competition is pretty fierce, and none of the major manufacturers had a military order for what is now the AW-139, the Bell 525 and the original S-92. Those new aircraft can perform quite a few of the non-shooting military missions quite well, and were all developed without a military requirement.