The reason I suggested Chinooks was because the navy's specialist helicopters are going to be seriously pressed to cover all their needs. the FAA Wildcats and ASW Merlins are already pushed to meet their commitments with the surface fleet. We won't be getting nearly enough of the Merlin HC3s with folding rotors to replace the old Junglie Sea Kings, so the pool of those that we have will need to be available for amphibious duties at short notice.marktigger wrote:If we are starting to train in Belize again how about basing some wildcats, Merlins or Pumas there?
as to Merlin training an updated bay design with a hanger could fulfil the Argus replacement requirement for an aviation training ship, PCRS and Transport?
That basically leaves us with only few options: Army Wildcat, Chinook and Puma. I ruled out the former because its lack of heavy lift capability means it'd struggle with HADR and troop transport/training at BATSUB.