Exactly the point I was trying to make, how to turn a perfectly capable helicopter into a colossal waste of money, brains and talent (WOMBAT). Start with a proven design with a perfectly adequate current configuration and then specify a two instead of three person crew and the associated complex flight control system before changing the certification agency and requirements resulting in the cancelation of the project. Wait a couple of years and sell your airframes to your neighbour, who has been successfully operating the type in its original form for over a decade, for conversion back to three crew configuration. I remember reading somewhere that even had the two crew arrangement on the helos worked the learning curve for the observors to fill their new expanded role was so great that the RAN expected a very significant increase in the number of washout during training.
The saddest part of this debacle is the fact the ships they were intended for (and would be so much more satisfactory with our current border protection issues) were cancelled removing the RANs need for the helicopters before any of them were actually ordered! That said an order for SH-2Fs or Lynxs in the 70s to operate from the OHP FFGs would have been smart, insignia blue with white uppers? Then again it likely would have been cheaper to slightly expand the size of the planned corvette to fit the Seahawk than to acquire another type.
