Navaleye,
We burnt a lot more hours in Afghan than in the orginal planning assumptions when we bought the aircraft. That, and the fact that the US are migrating to the 64E standard, brings obsolescence management into the equation. As intimated elsewhere, the big carrot to do the deal now is to take advantage of the large bulk purchases by the US Army and get the cabs at the lowest price.
Bigbux,
I find myself agreeing with you over PDS and IOS activities; the supply of spares for Merlin, for example, had resulted in poor availability stats for several users.