[greedo]

Regarding the Sea Apache, it really would have been a huge redesign. Deleting the 30mm Chain Gun, moving the landing gear to the wing stubs, adding a nose mounted radar, and Harpoon/Sidewinder capability. Now some of these requirements were Navy specific, but some would have been required had it been selected just for the USMC.

I think that even an unmodified Apache would have been just too expensive for the always cash-strapped Corps. Plus the airframe and engine commonality with the UH1s they flew simplified their logistics tremendously. It's always a gamble comparing unit costs since so much is either hidden or excluded, but the latest info I found showed a new build AH-1Z was around $30M in 2018, while a new build AH-64 is currently around $52M. And I'm pretty sure the Corp has simply been rebuilding older airframes to the new "Viper" standard. (Turns out most were rebuilds, but some were new construction.)

Regarding the RN flying Apaches, is this from large decked ships, or from anything with a pad? I know the Merlin had a neat winch type thing to help it land in bad weather, and I just wonder how much more likely a rollover would be on a small decked ship versus something like HMS Ocean etc.

[cpgxiii]

I think the Sea Apache design was doomed to failure, potentially deliberately, by including so many modifications to the base design. A reasonably scoped modification for the USMC would have been the standard increased corrosion resistance, folding main rotor, tail wheel moved forwards, and folding tail fin+rotor (i.e. all the same modifications made to the base S-70 design for shipboard use).

The cost question is a very tricky one, hence why I used the comparison of foreign orders between the two types as an assessment of overall value. My understanding is that more AH-1Z/UH-1Y airframes were new builds than was originally planned (hardly a surprise), which strongly suggests that airframe reuse did not save as much in production as hoped. The strongest argument for the AH-1Z cost-wise was the commonality with UH-1Y, but had the USMC considered switching entirely to AH-64 + SH-60 derivatives instead I don't think that argument would have been as strong (after all, the whole rest of the USN operates SH-60 variants, including the ships that operate USMC AH-1/UH-1s).

The RN has flown WAH-64s from their large deck ships, so roughly equivalent size-wise to anything that routinely operates AH-1Zs. The only important modification in the WAH-64 design is a folding rotor to reduce storage size, but that doesn't affect takeoff/landing abilities. With some minor changes like pulling the tail gear forwards (e.g. as on the {S,M}H-60{B,F,R}), you could fit an Apache on anything that can handle a Seahawk (i.e. basically everything with a pad). Notably, the AH-64 wheelbase is not that different from the spacing of the skids on an AH-1, so it's not going to be hugely different in terms of stability on a large deck ship. There's also been a fair number of training exercises between US army AH-64 units and USN ships, so shipboard Apache operations aren't exactly foreign to the US either.