On Mar 26, 5:13*pm, Martin Brown
wrote:
On 26/03/2013 16:58, Nightjar wrote:

On 26/03/2013 16:47, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In article ,
* * Nightjar wrote:
HM Coastguard runs the ones around here and AIUI, they will oversee the
new service in much the same way. Personally, in times when the
Services' budget is being cut, I would rather see what money there is
going to equip the troops on the front lines.

It still makes sense to be able to do military search and rescue though.
Domestic SAR work provides very realistic training.

As I understood it, they were paid to provide the service.

The problem is that, if they were to continue to do it, they would need
to replace their ageing fleet of helicopters and SAR helicopters are
fairly specialised bits of kit.

Colin Bignell

So to avoid that short term hardware cost and retaining trained SAR
teams we outsource it and get royally ripped off in the longer term
losing most of our military SAR capability too. How very clever

--
Regards,
Martin Brown

That about sums up political thinking these days.
The sort of thinking that got us in the electricity mess we are in
right now.

The privatised firm will be able to get ex-military pilots at the
moment. But when the supply of them runs out, who will pay for the
cost of training new pilots?