My squadron had around 30 helicopters. It was said that 1 hr of flight was 10 hrs of maintenance and was ideal conditions not Vietnam era machines. Thats also just scheduled maintenance. Which we had specials which were 7/14/28/56/91/364 day, you had phase inspections which were done after a certain number of flight hours. Those usually required to break the helicopters down and replace a lot of components. Added to that you had unscheduled maintenance which was the bulk of our work and could range from something simple like a component stopped working to intermittent in flight after 30 flying which is hard to duplicate on the ground. Also all aircraft need to fly at least once every 30 days or it requires more work and a functional check flight before it can be flown again. One last thing is that every down aircraft counts against our unit readiness which then is a negative against the CO who is looking to make full bird. In Iraq in 03 we flew 3000 hrs in 1 month. It was a lot of work to get those birds back up including a massive customs inspection to make sure there was not biological contaminants. So lots of pulling every panel and cleaning out dirt and debris… on a ship with limited water. All of that adds up given our shop had about 30-35 people.

There is a reason the bulk of the military is logistics and support. It’s not the 1800s where you just need a bunch of bodies to shoot in a line.