We used to have an excellent way of representing the RAF (and the RN) in the military SAR Force but this was moved out of the military and into commercial aviation.
Most people recognised either the yellow RAF aircraft or the grey RN ones and knew that the crews were military and spent 98% of their time rescuing civilians from life and health threatening situations, some very high profile.
We were sacrificed on the altar of Defence spending cuts because we weren't a 'core-military capability' despite a constant presence in the Falklands and providing our paramedic winchmen to MERT crews in Afghanistan.
Now the commercial operator is running out of rearcrew because they can't poach them from the military, where they used to be excellently trained.
A short sighted vision of the RAF/RN future by ambitious senior officers - if they had defended the SAR Force even half as much as the Reds, military crews would still be training and delivering top drawer SAR.
Those military crews who moved to the contractor have ensured the high standards remained but it would have been so much better to have kept those skills and personnel in house.
As a defence aerospace journalist, one of the questions that myself and others repeatedly asked when the decision to transition from military to civilian SAR was made was, 'Where will you get your crews from once the current crop of ex-military pilots and winchmen retire?'. Never got a satisfactory answer.