RDRickster
No you havn't "Hijacked" the thread. It's all related to aviation, security and wasting money.
In NSW there is a general lack of planning regarding Helicopter Assests. Look at the typical fire fighting helicopters, poor planning, lack of dedicated trained organised contractors, hope we can get assests when we are on fire mentality. And the Police are no exception. After they lost the BK many years ago they were/are terribly equipped and organised as far as helicopters are concerned, pathetic comes to mind!!
So its not a suprise that the BK was bought, the state above NSW, Queensland has government B412's, AS350 and a host of smaller community based twins and singles doing EMS/Police/SAR work, and Victoria down south has the most progressive Police Serevice in the country with N3's and AS350. [Contracted airframes with Police Crews]. But NSW has nothing similair.
I can only hope that a good swag of that 4.5 is on spare parts and training, due to the Police Service not really being the most switched on government arm to run helicopters, just look at Perths Police aircraft.
As far as Pilots with Guns. This was done to death on Jet Blast where the views were very polarised in both directions. It seemed that the gun totting folk that arm themselves to go to the supermarket, thought that they could save their stricken airliner with their private issue 50 cal mounted on the back of the centre console, whilst the other viewpoint was to leave it to the experts, with strong viewpoints and arguements in both directions!
Yes El Al does have a good track record. They have two armoured doors, providing an airlock between the doors. And a procedure that when a pilot needs to "P" then the @# number of Marshalls are alerted by &^%$ and all are brought to "Stand By", and the pilot quickly does his business and returns before all are at rest again. The doors are never to be both opened at once.
If you have flown on these aircraft you may have noticed that you [if not holding an Israeli passport and with your surname ending in "stein"] were sitting down the back and on a window with a couple of solid folk around you- -its called passenger profiling. You will see more and more of this in the other western countries soon I'm sure.