What a load of hoop!!
For those of you talking with no real knowledge of SAR (which sounds like a lot of you) the boys and girls in the overseas operational theatres are not the only one's working their arses off. Exactly how many spare Sea Kings do you think there are available to deploy? How many spare crews do you think there are? If you actually know how many spare airframes, crews and engineers there are in UK Mil SAR you would no there is almost no spare capacity.
The SAR Force specifically posts personnel to the SH force to enhance their operations with SAR knowledge and those crews are much better placed to conduct those sorts of operations. It is not a case of us thinking we are better than them and letting them get shot at, in fact (it pains me to say it) the simple fact is that they are better at that sort of mission than we are.
In any case, UK Military SAR is part of a system legally obliged by international law to provide cover for the UK. We can't just up sticks and leave even if we wanted to. For those doubters amongst you, we are also struggling with manpower due to the fact that a significant number of our personnel are in, pretty much, all the hot spots that rotary assets are deployed worldwide. Battle dodgers we are no more (if ever we were). Our aircraft may not be deployed but our personnel certainly are.
Last edited by SAR Bloke; 15th Jul 2006 at 22:27.