...I served eight years in Marine Corps aviation....I can and do appreciate that. What was your job in Marine Corps aviation?
The H-46 was getting too damn dangerous to stuff troops into starting 1989--we lost about one bird every three months to the same problem (main rotor blade separating from the main rotor hub in flight), for a 18 months. That's half a squadron right there.
In 'Nam, the CH-46 had this habit of falling apart in midair because of gross NATOPS violations by pilots.
BTW, the CH-53E Super Stallion had a FAR higher crash rate than the Osprey during its T&E and IOC phases. At one point, there was talk of just killing the entire program, because the Super Stud was "just too dangerous."
The CH-53E was (and is) an aircraft singularly unforgiving of sloppy maintenance practices and violations of its flight envelope (When the angle of bank hits 90 degrees, the lift kind of slides off of the rotor disc). I was a plank owner in HMH-466, and that squadron literally saved the CH-53E program. We had SNCOs who actually made sure that the work was done all the way instead of "close enough for gubmint work." We had pilots who flew the bird TO and not BEYOND its flight envelope.
Bottom line: the CO of VMMT-204 who ordered the paperwork fudged ought to be making big rocks into very small rocks for the next 20 years. We ought to NOT let KC-130 pilots transition into rotary-wing aircraft. We ought to expect that if the FCS computer doesn't reset, the pilots ought to LAND THE BLOODY THING as the NATOPS manual says.