You could call the Falklands a deployed SAR operation? But not in the terms you refer to. My personal view is that the UK SARF should have grasped the CSAR mantle and used that as its reason for remaining 100% military.
But you all forget one point.
A secondary role for ALL helicopter aircrew is SAR. Its nice if you have seen it before though, soooooo, we will still need some SAR trained crews to spread the techniques through the SH force and through new crews joining now. Yes, at the moment there may well be 'enough' people around to cater for this but, you can't rely on that as a plan, so you have to put in place some system that covers replacing the current SAR gods with more modest deities of the future.
And So to the future? How about a SAR Force based on the DHFS system? COMR ac and a mil/civ mix? And why not?
However, pba_target, the tone of your initial post suggests journo to me fishing for some juicy gossip to print. There isn't any we have been round this buoy numerous times so its old news!
The Sea King is old, but hey, what isn't these days!