Tec pilot
You have made some fairly insulting insinuations about other peoples professional abilities and experience and the equipment they use based only on some fairly sketchy details of one incident.
As has already been mentioned NATO strops come in a variety of forms. Additionally, SAR helicopters in the UK do not only do mountain rescue, around 40% of the task involves over water work, often a considerable distance offshore. The Nato strop in its UK form works well in these circumstances. Indeed it is also used by the Civil SAR operators in the UK, I presume you regard them as professional enough.
There are several thousand SAR missions of all types flown safely each year in the UK using this strop system and a rescue hoist, by highly professional civilian and military crews.
I can only presume you are not familiar with the operating environment, equipment or task in the UK, it would be rather like me passing critical comment on using fixed lines for rescue in the mountains in europe, a system which I am not conversant with but which obviously has its own benefits and risks.
Oh and before you question my professional qualification to comment, as you have with some others, I have been winched many times using this system as a training survivor in both overland and overwater operations. I have also flown several thousand hours as an SAR Captain, both day and night, on SAR operations over the UK and its surrounding waters.
I apologise if my comments seem rather forceful but I believe you are commenting unfairly and without sufficient understanding of the operating environment or task in the UK.